Transcription
Being original and creative is overrated, people say. I have to come up with this new business structure that’s never happened before. No, you should copy it. I know people have gotten 40 million views and sold $200 worth of stuff to go with it. Well, if you need 40 million views every time you want to make 200 bucks, you’re in really big trouble. So my blog has a million readers. I don’t use TikTok, I don’t use Facebook, I don’t use Instagram. Other people talk about me on those platforms. How does someone do that? I’m not even having to play the game of the algorithms. I’m not having to show up in places where, for me as a person, it doesn’t make sense for me to show up there. Stop making average crap. There are people who open a little tiny pizza shop, and there’s a line around the block. There isn’t a line around the block cuz they’re good at using TikTok; there’s a line around the block cuz they made a pizza that was worth other people putting on TikTok.
Okay, so before we get into the episode, I had to share this with you guys. Once we booked this conversation with Seth, I go down to my local library, I find the shelf where all of Seth’s books are, and I check them out, every single one of them. And then, in the week leading up to this conversation, I’m reading through his books, and honestly, I was unsure of exactly where I wanted to take this episode. But then, something happened. One night, I’m reading one of Seth’s books, and in it he shares his five steps to marketing, and the moment that I read that section of the book, I knew that we had it. And so, in this episode, we go deep on the five steps to marketing that Seth has used to build multi-million dollar brands, sell millions of books, and spread his ideas without being pushy or overly salesy. And my hope with creating this is that one of you listening takes what we share today, and you use it to build your dream business. That’s my hope. But you know what? I’m not going to say anything more. Let’s just get to the conversation. You’re listening to the Callum Johnson show.
I think, in my mind, you’re like the Godfather of marketing, right? You’re like the expert that I go to. I watch your interviews, I read your blogs, I read your books on everything when it comes to marketing. And so here’s where I wanted to begin: If someone’s watching this video with the belief that the world is just too noisy, social media is too saturated, there are just too many people already doing businesses, already trying to spread their ideas in the world, and that is holding them back from growing their business, their side hustle, their coaching program, whatever it is that they’re doing—that’s their belief—as the Godfather of marketing, what would you tell that person?
They’re absolutely right. There’s too much noise; there’s too much hustle; there’s too much mediocre crap from people who think they have a coaching program or some shortcut or want to sell you something they got off of a dropshipper. That’s not what marketing is; that’s just noise. And I’m not the Godfather of marketing, but I did carve out a new definition for marketing that separates me from all the people who want to sell you a system or a hustle or spam or interrupting people. Marketing is creating the conditions for an idea to spread, and it doesn’t spread because you’re trying hard to push it out there; it spreads because the people you are serving benefit from telling their friends. And if you are insisting on selling average stuff to average people and bringing more mediocre junk to the world, I can’t help you. You know, I’m…I’m curious about even just hearing that. I think it’s so good, and you make it so simple. I’m…where we got misaligned, because I think if you spoke to most people and you ask them what marketing is, they would say it’s billboards, or it’s ads, or it’s, you know, what I see on social media. It’s all…it’s what interrupts my YouTube video to tell me something. At what point did we get misaligned with what marketing is?
The Flintstones, all the way back to the time of the caveman. Uh, The Flintstones were a mediocre TV show, uh, how many years ago? Four, six, five years ago? And if you ran an ad on The Flintstones, you would make enough money to run more ads, and around and around and around it would go. Once you could make a fortune pushing a mediocre cartoon. And in fact, if you look on YouTube, you can find a cigarette commercial featuring Fred and Barney promoting Winston cigarettes. But once we built an entire world where it was about making average stuff for average people and advertising it like crazy, TV became a gold mine. TV drove the culture. Then cable came along, so anyone who could build a cable channel that got followers, like MTV, they had a gold mine. Then the internet came along, and all of a sudden advertisers are like, “Wait, you mean I can run ads that only cost me a penny?” And the business model for the first bunch of years of the internet and for all social media continues to be: hunt people down, steal their attention, steal their privacy, manipulate them, and get them to buy crap. And that’s how we built the system. We…you know, I’m…I think, um, beliefs are like interesting to me because I think that a lot of the times we get conditioned to think a certain way. And so, when you’re not a marketer, you’re someone, you know, maybe you spend time on…on TikTok or on Instagram or on LinkedIn or on YouTube, and you’re constantly getting bombarded with ads—like that’s your whole life experience; that’s how products have been sold to you. How does someone that’s listening that is not like that—maybe they’re introverted, or they…they’re not someone that wants to be in everyone’s face with their product—how do you even start to reverse that belief into thinking like, “I don’t just need to interrupt people”?
Let’s say you love jazz. Let’s say you’re Christian McBride, one of the most recorded and honored jazz musicians of all time, or Patricia Barber, uh, who plays the piano in Chicago. These people don’t want to be in your face. These people want to make their music, and yet people travel from all over the world to hear Patricia play in Chicago, and yet Christian McBride has albums that sell and sell, even though he’s not running ads on social media. So what I’m trying to help people see is that we are surrounded by systems, and systems try to make themselves invisible, but if we look, we can see them. So a simple example is: How much should it cost to get married? And the answer is exactly what your best friend spent on her wedding, plus a little more. And so it’s normal to have matchbooks with your name on them. When else do you want matchbooks with your name on? When else do you need a band, right? All of these things that people do—if it’s so fun, how come they don’t do it four times a year, right? So the system makes it normal. It’s normal to go $300,000 in debt if you grow up in the suburbs to go to a famous college that has a football team, even though you can learn everything far more deeply and with more impact without doing that, because it’s normal. It’s part of the system. So the folks who you’re looking at, whether they’re Kardashians or people who are, you know, pitching whatever hobby you’re into, you’re noticing the ones that are doing it on social media. The social media companies have turned everyone else into unpaid employees that you’re running around doing what the social media companies tell you to do because they want you to.
So my blog has a million readers. I don’t use TikTok, I don’t use Facebook, I don’t use Instagram. Other people talk about me on those platforms, but I’m not in everybody’s face. I’m not trying to be in everybody’s face. That’s…that’s so interesting. And you know what? I think the…how does someone do that? Because I think there’s so many people that want to do that, right? Which is like, “I’m not even having to play the game of the algorithms. I’m not having to show up in places where, for me as a person, it doesn’t make sense for me to show up there.” That’s not where I thrive. And so how is someone able to create that? And I know, for you, you’ve been doing it for years, so there’s a…there’s a long process to doing it, but what is step one?
Stop making average crap. Stop seducing yourself into thinking that we need that thing that you are making, because we probably don’t. And to be remarkable is to be worth making a remark about. So there are people who open a little tiny pizza shop, and there’s a line around the block. There isn’t a line around the block cuz they’re good at using TikTok; there’s a line around the block cuz they made a pizza that was worth other people putting on TikTok. And yet, there…the last time I counted, there were more than 5,000 pizza places in New York City, and there’s only a few that make an extraordinary slice of pizza, because it’s hard. And if you choose to lean in to work that is hard, that might not work, that…that exposes you, is the…you might think you are then you’re measuring the right thing. The false proxy of how many people are following you on social media is a trap. I know people have gotten 40 million views of a TikTok and sold $200 worth of stuff to go with it. Well, if you need 40 million views every time you want to make 200 bucks, you’re in really big trouble.
You know, I actually…um, it’s funny, cuz I was watching…I was watching the TED Talk that…that you did this morning, actually, how do you get ideas to spread? And there was a quote in it that you said which I absolutely loved, and I need to give it to people. You said, “The thing that is going to decide what gets talked about, what gets done, what gets purchased, what gets built, is…is it remarkable?” And remarkable is a really cool word because we usually think that that just means that something is neat, but it also means, “Is that thing worth making a remark about?” I thought that was so good. I’m…I’m…I’m curious if…if we go into your story and the evolution of Seth Godin and your thoughts about marketing, when was the first moment when you had that realization that the way to succeed in marketing is to make something remarkable, which is something that is worth remarking about?
So my personal story isn’t that interesting in terms of how it’s going to help people make their impact on the world. I had…um…my first real job was at a software company working on software from Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, and other great software…science fiction authors, and I was the head of marketing for this line of software, and I didn’t have a very big budget. And so I knew that if I ran an ad, I would just be wasting the money. So what else could I do? Well, I could build software that people would want to play with their friends. And so, if you’re playing it with your friends, I don’t have to worry about getting the word out, because you are getting the word out for us. It’s really true. Can you…can you…because I think I want to get into…you have like these five steps of marketing, and I…and I want to get into it because I think if people can internalize those five steps, I think there’s going to be people that listen to this video and then they go and build their dream business. And so I want to get into that, but before we do, can you give some examples? I just want to make it so real for people—examples of companies that just did something remarkable and that was the reason why their business…their marketing was a success. Like what comes to mind?
So again, to be clear, remarkable is not a gimmick, and it’s not a hustle. It’s something people choose to talk about. Name any successful company of the last 20 years, and I can tell you how they did it. This is what Google did. Google didn’t run an ad for years and years and years. This is what Facebook did. They didn’t run an ad for years and years and years. When was the last time you saw a Facebook ad? This is how the iPhone took off. The iPhone didn’t take off because it had great ads; it took off because when people heard your ringtone, they want to know what the hell was going on in your pocket. And I can tell you about small companies like the, by the way, B Bakery in New York that…they make gluten-free, dairy-free baked goods. My wife founded it, and they sell a lot of stuff. Why do they sell it? Because if you have a friend who doesn’t eat dairy and you have a friend who doesn’t eat wheat, and you serve this at dinner, you’re going to talk about it. So we don’t have a cookie shortage; we don’t have a phone shortage; we don’t have a search engine shortage. What we have is a shortage of things to talk about that connect us to other people, and that isn’t a side effect; it’s the cause of these things growing—that connection to other people. You know what? Let’s…let’s go into…the five steps of marketing, because like…I…I told you this actually before we started recording that I went to the library and I picked up all of your marketing books. It was like on the same shelf in my local library, and I was like reading through, and I’m like, “Where do…where…like what do I want to give people from this conversation?” And when I read the five steps of marketing, I was like, “That is it.” And so I want to go through each of these steps, and we can just have fun with a conversation and see where it goes for people.
Okay, so step one: The first step is to invent a thing that’s worth making, with a story worth telling and a contribution worth talking about. And so, just to begin, if someone is listening and they have a business idea, they have…I don’t know, it’s their hair care line, their skin care product, and a power line, whatever the thing is, how do I make the decision…this thing that I have in mind…is it a thing worth making?
Okay, so the first thing I would say is: Being original and creative is overrated when it comes to inventing a business. That people say, “I have to come up with this new business structure that’s never happened before.” No, you should copy it. You should find someone who has a business structure. You shouldn’t invent franchising. You say, “Oh, it worked for McDonald’s, it worked for Subway, it worked for these people. I’m going to use a model that already exists.” So that’s the first thing that I would say to people. So my guess is the person you’re talking about, who’s coming up with skincare, they probably aren’t going to build a factory that’s making some sort of magical cream. What you’re probably talking about is buying average skincare wholesale, putting a label on it, and trying to sell it to people. So what’s the model? The model is, “Well, first, I got to interrupt a lot of people and get the word out.” Huh, well, we already talked about why that’s a problem. So what’s the alternative? The alternative is to realize that everyone who buys clothes at a closing store is already wearing clothes, and that everyone who goes to a restaurant already has food in their fridge at home. Home…that what we buy when we buy most things—once we have healthcare and a roof over our head and something to eat—is a story. It is a story about status and affiliation and what kind of person we are and who we want to hang out with. And so, when Hermès comes out with the Birkin bag, which used to cost $115,000 and now it costs more than $30,000, every person who bought it already had a purse. So what are you buying when you’re buying a Birkin bag? You’re buying the ability to wear it outdoors and have your friends see it, and they…and you have a conversation about the purse—not about how much it can hold, not about, you know, how many animals were slaughtered to make it, but about what it is to own this thing. So what’s the contribution worth making? The contribution worth making is to weave together possibility, status, affiliation, community, in a story that creates tension. Because if I ignore it, then I don’t take any action. But if there’s tension, what’s going to happen? What happens after that? Can I do it? Will I be left out? Will they sell out? That tension causes forward motion, and it causes me to focus my behavior. So I think built into the question is everyone’s presupposition that the way, the quick hustle, is to become the next Kardashian. The thing is, we don’t need another Kardashian, because we already have one.
You know what? I think it’s so…um…special, and I can even…like my…my very first business that I ever started was a clothing line, and it was a spectacular failure—spectacular failure. And the reason why is I wanted to be like the next Nike, and I had all of these grand aspirations. I thought that in…to stand out, I needed to do something so big and spectacular. And I think one of the special things that you even mention is like something that makes us all unique is our story—that is an instant differentiator, is in the story. I think the problem is…is like a lot of us, we don’t know how to tell good stories. And so can you speak about that because you…you mentioned tension, and I think stories…of those things that we always hear it, and we hear different people speak about it—the value of storytelling, whether it’s directors or musicians or business people—but I think that there’s like a lack of clarity of what…around how to tell a good story or even what a good story is. And so can you clear that up for the person that’s listening, like, “How do I even figure out what is the story I should be sharing?”
Yeah, so I’m going to disagree with one part. I think almost every person I’ve met, at some point, is good at telling a story. Uh, if you’ve ever invited four friends out to dinner and they all came, why did they come? It’s not because they owe you a favor; it’s because the story of the possibility of that dinner—who else was coming, who was hosting it, where are we going, what time are we going—made it an instant easy yes, right? So this podcast, which has a bazillion downloads…your first episode…how many people listened to it? Ten, about that? Yeah, yeah. So how do you get from ten to a bazillion? You didn’t do it by hustling on social media; you did it because the ten people who listened to the first episode…the conditions were created that their life would be better if they told the story of your podcast. And so what makes a podcast successful is not the guests; it is the structure of the story. Why should I listen to this when there are 999,000 other podcasts? What might not work? Where’s the tension? Where’s the possibility? Who is this for? And we’ve been brainwashed to make average stuff for average people and then say to people like me, “How do I get the word out?” And it’s frustrating because people like me say, “You can’t,” and then you feel ripped off. The right question is: How do I create the conditions for the smallest viable audience to find something they would miss if they were gone, that they can tell their friends about?
You know, I actually…I love that point that we actually tell great stories all of the time. And…and it’s funny, even if you mentioned the example of like going to dinner with your friends…how many times have you gone to dinner with a friend and they can tell you an incredible story about something that happened at work last week, or they went out, you know, on Friday night, and they tell you a story of how the night went, and it’s captivating, and you’re like drawn into it, and you’re so engaged. And so my question to you is: Why do we struggle so much when it comes to our business, when it comes to our idea, the thing that we would like…love for people to embrace? Why do you think so many people struggle to tell a story then, but like in our lives, it’s like we can tell great stories? What do you think that is?
Okay, quick break. Can you guys relate to…to this? Sometimes, as entrepreneurs and creatives, we have the perfect video idea, but not the perfect footage. And so what ends up happening is you’re editing a video, and you need that one cinematic shot…
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Well, I'm not sure people don't struggle in their life. They struggle to tell a story to their spouse about the truth of what they're experiencing. They struggle to uh, engage in a situation where they need to be seen and they're being judged unfairly. There are lots of places where we struggle with our story, and they all have something in common, which is it's scary to be seen; it's scary to be a fraud; it's it's scary to assert a future that's not here yet; it's scary to be creative; it's scary to be on the hook. And so impostor syndrome is real, and what it means to engage with someone and get them to buy something from you is a sort of radical empathy. Because what you're saying, if you're a decent person, in the back of your head is, "Well, I would never buy this." And so you feel like a fraud because you're bus selling X, but when no one's watching, you're buying Y. And the empathy is this: if you worked at a panty hose company and you're someone who doesn't wear panty hose, you can still imagine that there are people who need panty hose. You can be an oncologist even if you've never had cancer. You can invent kids' toys even though you're not three years old. So what we're trying to do is show with possibility and tell a story that we can live with, that the other person really needs to hear.
You know what? I want to—I think it's a great moment to move to step two. And so this is what you said as step two: you said the second step is to design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about. And so I think about that point you made just now about radical empathy for those few people that care about the thing that you're building. And so talk to me about that because I think that that's something that people really struggle with, and it's something that I—I struggled with in various stages of trying different companies. It's difficult to go from that mindset of "I just want anyone and everyone to buy my thing" to know it's actually just these select small group of people, and I'm going to tell a story and build a narrative that fits them. Talk to me about that.
So do you have any uh, tools at home? I do not many, but I do—I do have some. So the typical jigsaw, electric jigsaw on Amazon costs about $25. And if you want to make a jigsaw that's going to sell a lot, you go to China, you get them made as cheap as possible, and say if you're looking for a jigsaw, here's a jigsaw; it's a dollar or less than everybody else. That's a race to the bottom. And this company showed up, Festool, and they said, "We're going to make a $220 jigsaw." It costs 10 times more than the other jigsaws, and it's the best jigsaw you will ever touch. It is everything about its design, how long the battery lasts, how it feels in your hand, the packaging it comes in, the case you carry around in it, and the way it makes you feel when you're around the other woodworkers—all of those things are worth $1,000. And so 200 bucks is a bargain. And if someone looks at them and says, "What are you talking about? My $25 jigsaw is fine," the answer is, "You're right, it's fine; good for you. You've solved your jigsaw problem. We're here for people with a different problem." And we can go down the list of just about every product that people actually care about; there's a cheaper alternative somewhere that more people buy. Way more people have an Android phone than an iPhone. Way more people, but many of the people have an iPhone aren't giving it up because being popular is different than being great; being popular is different than being profitable. And so we find the smallest group of people that we're willing to be on the hook to. If you're running a nonprofit and you want to go raise money, well, the volunteer fire department two towns up, what they do is once a year they put roadblocks up in the road and they stand on a busy street with with rubber boots, and in order to get by, you got to throw some money in the boot. So they collect money from everybody. If they get five bucks from a person, that's a lot. And there's a nonprofit I work with where the average contribution is $50,000. If you're going to go raise $50,000, you have to tell a totally different story; you can't just stand in the street with a boot. And so we got to pick which group of people has a problem that they want to solve so bad that they will pay money to solve it.
You know the thing, um, so 18 months ago I was running or I was trying to run an agency, and at the time I would—I would kind of hedge my bets, like we'd be doing some stuff for these sort of clients, we'd be doing some marketing stuff, and then some things are just for like entrepreneurs that want to start a podcast. I was putting my bets everywhere, and I had to reflect on it, and I realized it was fundamentally like a lack of confidence. I didn't have the confidence in what I was doing, so I was trying to appeal to everyone because I was like, "Someone will take it." And so I think the way that you use words is—is intentional and it's important. You say the smallest viable market, and so I think each of those words is important: smallest viable market. And so how does someone, if they're listening to this and they're at a point in their business where they're kind of trying to appeal to everyone, they're in the same situation I was in—how do they make that decision with confidence of like, "No, no, no, I'm going to disregard all of these people who are—maybe they're even paying me money right now because I'm only meant to appeal to that"—like, how do I get to that level of—how do I make that decision?
Well, we should talk about decisions in a minute, but to pick—pick up the agency example, if I had to start an agency today, I would build an agency, for example, that only works with pediatric orthodontists. If you're not a pediatric orthodontist, I'm not going to build your website, and I'm not going to help you get the word out. I only work with pediatric orthodontists. By the time I've got four clients and I've proven that I'm effective, there's going to be a line out the door because pediatric orthodontists don't want to be innovators; they want to hire the person who's the very best at helping them grow their practice, the end. And once I have 20 clients, I never have to look for work again; I'm done. That's so different than saying, "You can—you're looking for an agency? We're an agency; you can pick anyone; we're anyone." So it's that emotional shift that we're talking about, but I want to talk about decisions since you brought it up, and this is from my friend Annie Duke. Annie used to be the World Poker Champion. So tell me, please, have you made a really good decision in the last three months? Can you think of one? Yeah? Okay, this decision you made, did it turn out well? It turned out amazingly. Yeah? Yeah, that's what everyone says. That doesn't mean it was a good decision. If you buy a lottery ticket and you win, it was still a stupid decision because buying a lottery ticket is for idiots; there's no math that makes sense to buy a lottery ticket. But if it turns out all right, now you think you're really smart? No, you were just lucky. On the other hand, it's entirely possible to make a good decision and have it fail. That if someone decides to get on a plane and fly from here to Toledo and the plane crashes and they die, they didn't make a bad decision; they just got really unlucky. Flying is the safest way in the history of the world to travel, so it was a good decision but a bad outcome. So how do we decide with confidence? Well, you're probably not going to have confidence; confidence implies that you know how the future is going to turn out. I'm just saying all the math, all the data, all the history shows that if you want to make something great, you need to make it for someone specific; you need to pick a group of people that's big enough to support you if it works, but not everybody, right? So you probably shouldn't start an ad agency for left-handed red-haired people who have a monocle because there just aren't enough of those people that even if you delighted all of them, you—you're still not going to be able to be in business. But you also shouldn't start a headphone company for everyone who has ears because that's too big.
You know what? I've—I've—um, I always say this. I say this—this seat that I sit in is an interesting one because we've done over 100 episodes at this point, and all of our guests are like phenomenal; they've built incredible things. And so one of the things that's interesting for me is that I start to see patterns, and one of the patterns that I see is that a lot of entrepreneurs start out their businesses in this like experimentation phase where they're just trying a bunch of different things, and they're waiting for that moment where they see like an outlier, they see a spike, they see, "You know, we sent this out and it went up," right? And so it feels like there's actually a process to how you go super specific and you make that decision of like, "I'm going to go on this." Can you—can you speak to that because I'm sure that there's someone that's listening that's like, "Okay, I—I trust Seth; I need to go specific; I can tell that this is the right thing, but there's like a lack of awareness of like the process of how you actually get to the specific."
Well, first, please don't trust me. I'm trying very hard to give you all the data you need to make a good decision, but do it because I suggested it. Uh, with that said, this is an exercise in practical empathy. I am not a cancer survivor; I do not wear panty hose; I am not three years old. But if I want to do something to serve those groups of people, I better show up and see what happens, right? So my speaking career—I've given five TED Talks and a thousand talks around the world, but my first talks were for six people. And when you're doing a talk for six people, I already know everything I'm going to say, so I'm not judging it on, "Did I learn something?" I'm looking at the eyes of those people, and if I say something and a certain kind of person responds, I'll say more like that, and I'm training them, and they're training me at the same time. Once you are in the field doing this, you don't have to raise $50 million and go start a whole company; you just show up and you know—if you want to be in food service, uh, start a restaurant or something, get a job as a barista first and find out what kind of customer service interactions work on what kind of people, right? That stand-up comics—they get good because they do go to open mic night. Now what you're learning at open mic night is how do you please people who go to open mic night, and you may decide you can please people at a—at a wedding easier, so now go try that. But this is the experimentation of practical empathy.
I love that—the point—the point about practical empathy. I—I love that because it's like you're almost looking for that thing that you can see in some people's eyes; sometimes you see that like the light switch on—like you see that light come on. And so I actually think it's a really natural um, way into step three, which is the third step is to tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market. And so like the thing that—and I'm even smiling as I'm saying it because I just think it's so important to tell a story that matches the built-in narratives and dreams of that tiny group of people. There's so much power in those few words that you just said there. Can you just explain that to people? Um, so there's a video—I can't remember—Josh Bell—there's a Josh Bell video in the subway system of Washington, D.C., and they gave him a baseball cap—he's a super famous classical pianist—they gave him a baseball cap and had him show up in the subway and play. Everyone walked right by. These are some of the very same people who would happily pay $200 for tickets to see them at the Kennedy Center, but the context mattered because in the subway the mindset of someone is if there's someone playing music over there, they're not worth me listening to, but if they're on the stage at the symphony, they must be good because that's the context that I have been trained to understand and believe in. So there was a period of time, a few years ago, when some scammers dressed up in the—the robes of—of Buddhist monks and stood on the street corners of New York trying to—to beg for money in an organized way, and they were hauling in a lot of money 'cause they would walk up to somebody and offer them a—a Zen mindfulness sort of uh, emblem badge, and if they guessed right and the person they were approaching was someone who was a meditator, someone who'd been on a retreat, someone who understood mindfulness, an exchange just took place. Well, one, I'm giving the benefit of the doubt to someone in monk's robes, and two, they gave me something, so I have to reciprocate because that's one of the things that I was trained to do as a little kid. So they're scamming people; they're just keeping the money, but they were doing it by taking advantage of what we already believed. If you showed up dressed that way in 1784 in Abilene, Texas, no one would give you anything because they didn't have a story about Buddhist monks or reciprocity that would work today, right? So we have to be aware of the context: what are we plugging into? Why? What does it mean to buy a Super Bowl ad? Buying a Super Bowl ad is almost always a terrible decision, but it sends a signal to certain groups of people because of what we've come to expect from Super Bowl ads, not because they work.
You know, I was reading—I was actually reading it last night—Marketers are Liars—and in that book you talk about worldview, and I think one of the things that—and—and it's interesting to me because I think it's a mistake that I know I've made, and I think people make, uh, especially when they're trying to market something or they're trying to get a message out, they're trying to get an idea to spread, is that you—you're trying to change the way that people think; you're like trying to change people's beliefs. And so one of the things that you talk about is you talk about worldview, and actually—you know—actually, instead of me putting the words to it, you explain it—like the—the importance of worldview and actually how to—the person that's listening at home, they can use that to help their ideas spread. So you know, what did the person believe before you got there? What are the assumptions they made to survive before you got there? If you want to show up and change their mind, that's way harder than showing up and saying you were right all along. And so if there's a group of people who believe that buying new fashion, edgy fashion every spring is what people like them do, then you just say, "Here's the new fashions." But if you—if you want to go to people who buy all their stuff from the Land's End catalog and get them to buy exactly the same thing, they're not going to because first you have to train—train them to become the kind of person that buys new fashions every spring, then you gotta get them to buy what you picked. So when we treat different people differently, we begin with, "Where are they already?" Not, "How do I insist they change who they are?"
And you know what? It's actually—um, I saw an interview that you did, and you made a really interesting point because a big word for me has always been authenticity. Just want to be authentic; just want to be myself; I just want to be authentic all the time; that's my—that's my thing. And you say this thing—you go, "Authenticity is overrated." You said, "There are definitely times when I like to act authentically in the moment, but I don't because authenticity is overrated. Your customers don't want you to be authentic; your podcast listeners don't want you to be authentic; they want you to be the best version of you that you promised them." Can you explain that? Why is authenticity—well, I mean, it's very—you already nailed it—it's—authenticity is for amateurs; authenticity is for your friends and for your family; consistency is for professionals. If you get to a hotel and the doorman is having an authentically bad day, you don't want him to kick you in the shins, right? If you go to check in and your room is a mess because the housekeeper was having an authentically bad day, you're not like, "Thanks for being authentic." You want it to be consistent; that's what a brand is—a promise. So if you authentically are sick and tired of playing your top 40 hit, don't go on tour. Or if you do go on tour, you better be prepared to give the audience what they want, which is a song you're totally tired of playing, but that—that's what they came to hear. You need to consistently be the best version of KC and the Sunshine Band you can be, not say, "I'm KC, but now I feel like playing classical music." Buckle up, because that's not what they signed up for. What do you say? Because I can even hear the—I can hear the pushback from people, and it's the same pushback that—that I would have, which is, "Well, then are you telling me not to be myself?" Or that in order to be successful at something I have to do something that—
Doesn't feel right to me. What would you, what would you say to that? You've been doing that ever since you were two years old. The last time you were fully authentic is when you were wearing diapers and screaming at the top of your lungs. Ever since then, you've made choices based on how the world will respond to the choices you make. We all do that all the time, right? You authentically feel going 80 miles an hour, but there are cars in front of you. What are you going to do? You're going to drive at 20 miles an hour so you don't get in a crash. That's a civilization, but and a big circle around this: don't do work you're not proud of, and don't do work that burns you out. Don't do things you can't point to and say, "I'm glad I made that." But if you're getting what you want, doing what you want, please, you don't need my advice. But most of the time that people show up and listen to me, it's because they're doing what feels authentic, and the world doesn't care. And I'm like, yeah, you can't make the world care. What you can do is give the world what you promised them, and they might care about that. That's so good. Okay, the fourth step is the one that everyone gets excited about, and that's to spread the word. You mentioned it; everyone gets excited about it, so let's just get straight into it: How do I spread the word? You don't. You don't. We should all just go home. No. Your customer should spread the word. You know, actually, the thing, the thing that you mentioned, you said right in the beginning, you said that your job as a marketer is to create the conditions so that your customers can spread the word. So maybe that's the better question: What are the conditions so that my customers want to spread the word?
So let's say you care about the mass, uh, massacre of dogs and cats from pet shelters. That, until recently, 4 million dogs and cats were killed every year by the SPCA and Humane Societies of the United States. One thing that could have happened is Humane Society and the SPCA could have, uh, got a phone bank, spammed everyone by text, and begged people to come adopt a dog. That's just not going to work. The other thing you can do is invite a bunch of kids from the local high school to come to the shelter to take pictures of the dogs and cats and post them on Petfinder, so they'll get adopted. Because those kids will get something out of that; it will make them feel special; they will feel like leaders; they'll be making a contribution. And, by the way, they might adopt a dog while they're there. And if they do adopt a dog and they go home and people say, "Murray, Murray's such a beautiful dog, where'd you get him? Is he, you know, from a breeder?" And that person says, "No, I got him from that shelter down the street," the customers are spreading the word, right? That this happens over and over and over again. How did you find out about Google? How did you find out about Facebook? You didn't find out about it because they ran an ad. You found out about it because someone benefited from telling you. You know what I think that, and this has always been fascinating to me, even ever since I was a kid, and maybe this makes me a bit weird, but I think that human psychology is fascinating, and so I'm curious, right? Because you're, you're so right; there is a way to position something where one person just participates and does it; the other, you position it another way, not only does someone participate, they then share it with all of their friends. And so if you almost had to try and like nail that down, like summarize it on a psychological level, what is happening? What is being done so that in that second scenario, not only does the person buy my skin care product or buy my clothing product, they tell all of their friends about it? What is the psychology that's underpinning that?
Well, it sounds like you're asking for a shortcut, and I promise people who look for a shortcut are going to find it. What we're talking about here is culture and systems and civilization and people's needs. So if we're going to talk about someone starting an apparel company, my friend Blake started a company called Tom's Shoes, and his idea was, "Let's make espadrilles, $85 shoes made ethically, uh, in Portugal, and for every person who buys a pair of these shoes, I will give a similar pair of shoes to someone who doesn't have shoes." Now we can talk about the social impact of that and what is misguided and what is not misguided about it, but that's not my point. How do you grow that simple idea into a half a billion dollar company? Well, the first thing he did was he put a big logo on the back of the shoe. That's very unusual in those days for a woman to wear a shoe that wasn't a sneaker that had a logo on it. Then he went to some women, not all women, just a few, and said, "You're the kind of women that want to do good at the same time you're trying out new fashion." And perhaps a hundred people bought this pair of shoes. Now something interesting happens because this woman, this fashion-forward woman who bought the shoes 'cause she wanted to tell herself a story about being a philanthropist and a story about being fashion-forward, walks into her friend's house, and there is a social contract, unwritten in the United States, that if your girlfriend got a new haircut or has a new pair of shoes, you have to say, "Oh, that's so cute, where'd you get it?" You just have to say that. If you don't say that, you're being really rude. So that's an affiliation thing. I see my friend; we're going to talk about this. And then the status thing kicks in because the woman who wanted to go first looks at her friend and says, "Oh yeah, I'm better than you; I'm a philanthropist; I bought these shoes, and something good is happening for someone else 'cause I showed up." Why does the woman want to say that? 'Cause it gives her status; 'cause it moves her up in the eyes of her friend. Now her friend has a big problem; tension is created. Her problem is either she has to not buy the shoes because she's a bad, selfish person, or she has to buy a pair of these shoes to get back on track, status-wise, with her friend. But as soon as she gets the shoes, now she wants her other friends to ask her about the shoes, and so the process continues. And after selling millions and millions of pairs of shoes, Blake came out with Tom's Coffee, and the idea of Tom's Coffee is, "If you buy a pound of this coffee, we'll give money, not coffee, but we'll give money to someone who needs money." And it didn't work, and the reason it didn't work is because that's not how coffee works. For first of all, we tend to make coffee just for ourselves; secondly, if I make a cup of coffee for you, you don't see the label, so you don't get to ask me about the coffee, so there's no conversation. The system wasn't created to lead to the conversation taking place. And so that's a very specific example; it's way more complicated than that, but that's how you build a religion, how you build a political party, how you build a coffee company, how you build a farmers market: status and affiliation. Yeah. You know, you know what? It's, um, it's interesting because it's like the way that you get ideas to spread is that you need an understanding, first of all, it sounds like about fundamental human needs and desires, correct? Number one. Then the culture of whatever it is that your, your product is in; you need to know the norms and the culture. And then the systems, um, okay, I want to get to, I want to get to the last step before we get out of here. You said the last step is often overlooked: Show up. Show up regularly, consistently, and generously for years and years to organize and lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make, to earn permission to follow up, and to en, and to earn enrollment to teach. Why so many different components of that? But to you, what resonates? Like what do people need to understand? My, uh, late writing partner and, uh, friend Jay Levenson used to say, "You don't change your work when you get bored with it, and you don't change it when your spouse gets bored with it; you don't change it when your employees get bored with it; you change it when your accountant gets bored with it." And showing up in a fast-moving world is underrated. So I wrote my blog every single day for five years before I had a lot of people listen, reading it. That if you look at the arc of Apple Computer since 1980, it's mostly about value creation, opening the stores, coming out with more of the ecosystem, persistently sticking with, with not 50 products, but four. Now they're shifting to value capture; they're losing their imagination, and they're just making everything a little bit more expensive and a little less great, but they lasted for a long time, showing up for us, not doing things at us. And when we're in value creation mode, we realize we are here to serve, and if we do it with consistency and generosity, we get to do it again. [Music]
You know what, Seth? I know we're right about, we're, um, we're about to hit 2 o'clock, and obviously I appreciate your time and you being here. I have, I'm going to leave the decision up to you; either way is completely fine. I have one question that I just feel it's going to add value to the audience, and it's going to kind of finish this in just the right way. If we can wrap up in four minutes, that's great; my voice doesn't hold up much longer, but let's try. Okay, perfect. One of the things, and it's funny 'cause I was having a meeting with, um, Jesua, who helps me with my research for every episode, and he mentioned to me one of your books, *The Dip*, and we were just speaking about people giving up. And I think about, I think one of the things that I think about is how many incredible businesses that would change people's lives never got started or never got off the ground because someone gave up right before that moment where it was all, all going to work and like fall into place for them. They gave up. And so this was a quote that just stood out to me that you said in that book: "The dip is that moment when it feels so hard and so unlikely that you will succeed, and so it feels like you should quit because that's when everyone quits." And sticking through that dip is how we get to the other side. And so to the human that's listening to this and they're in that moment where it's like, "Man, I'm feeling that dip right now," what's the one piece of advice from your life and your experiences of how to persist through the dip?
Well, I think we have to go back a little bit, um, most people quit too late; they don't quit too soon. Most people shouldn't even start. If you want to run the marathon and you're very good at running the 400-yard dash and you've only got a couple hours to spend, don't start running a marathon because you're just not, you're going to get to the, to mile whatever, 12, and you're going to quit because you weren't prepared, because you didn't train, because you didn't have the resources, because you didn't sign up for something that was going to take that long. So the first big piece of that book is know where the dip is before you start. And the second part is when we think about the, a, the marathon, a lot of people quit at mile 22. What between someone who quits at mile 22 and someone who finishes? Because they're all tired; everyone's tired at mile 22. The difference is the people who finish figure out where to put the tired, and that's what it means to build something. It doesn't have to be a business, but to build something that's going to change the culture, acknowledging before you start that there's a dip somewhere up ahead. That the few exceptions from Silicon Valley are the exceptions; for everybody else, we're showing up knowing that it gets a lot more challenging before it gets easier. If you're not prepared for that, there's nothing wrong with sticking with your day job; there's nothing wrong with being a freelancer. But the entrepreneurs to get to the other side picked a project that was small enough that they could make it to the other side. This whole idea that you're going to build an AI engine that's going to change the world, world, no, you're not, because you don't have $40 billion. So go do a thing you can do; find a small problem; make a promise; do it for the people in that audience; keep the promise; and then do it again. It's actually, it's a very ironic thing that some of the biggest businesses that we all use every day, I even think about the founding story of Airbnb, a huge multi-billion dollar business, but the way it started, it, it started in the smallest way, right? And it's like this thing that it's difficult to get your mind around it because you're trying to think as big, you know, we're dreamers; we're thinking as big as possible; I want to take over the whole market. The biggest businesses start with the smallest markets. Um, Seth, thank you so much. Well, thanks for taking the time and showing up the way you do over and over again. I appreciate you. Thank you. I appreciate you as well; this was really fun. Okay, so if you enjoyed this episode, you're going to absolutely love what we did with this one right here. Click here.