MBA2572 Extended Interview: Seth Godin – How to Have a Better Strategy and Win People Over

Summary

The $100 MBA Show: Extended Interview with Seth Godin – How to Have a Better Strategy and Win People Over

Host: Omar Zenhom
Guest: Seth Godin
Release Date: January 13, 2025
Duration: Approx. 51 minutes

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Introduction

In this special episode of The $100 MBA Show, host Omar Zenhom engages in an extended interview with renowned marketing guru Seth Godin. Drawing from Godin's extensive experience as an entrepreneur, author, and thought leader, the conversation delves deep into the essence of strategy in business, the importance of understanding your audience, and the delicate balance between passion and practicality.

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Defining Strategy as a Compass

Omar initiates the discussion by highlighting the pervasive oversight of strategy among entrepreneurs and creators. He emphasizes that while many focus obsessively on their product's uniqueness, they often neglect the strategic direction needed to sustain and grow their ventures.

Seth Godin (01:17):
"If you want to build a vibrant, resilient business, you have to start by solving the problem for a few people."

Key Insights:

• Strategy vs. Tactics: Strategy serves as a guiding compass, providing direction, whereas tactics are the actionable steps taken to achieve strategic goals.
• Empathy as a Strategic Component: Understanding and empathizing with your audience is crucial. It’s not about comforting them but about genuinely identifying their needs and aligning your solutions accordingly.

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Empathy in Strategy

Omar connects Seth’s views on strategy with empathy, elucidating that it's not merely about feeling others' pains but about comprehending their perspectives to determine how best to assist them.

Seth Godin (04:10):
"One of the four key parts of strategy is empathy, which is imagining that other people have the power to say yes to you or no, and that the best way to get traction is to find people who want to go where you're going."

Key Insights:

• Understanding Your Audience: Effective strategy involves identifying and nurturing a dedicated audience who resonates with your vision.
• Flexibility in Strategy: If your current strategy doesn't attract the desired audience, be prepared to pivot and adapt.

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Hobby vs. Business

The conversation shifts to distinguishing between pursuing a passion as a hobby and operating as a business aimed at serving customers.

Seth Godin (07:15):
"A hobby is something you do for yourself, but a business is something you do for your customer. If you don’t know who your customer is, you have a hobby."

Key Insights:

• Purpose-Driven Work: Transitioning from a hobby to a business requires a shift in focus from personal satisfaction to delivering value to customers.
• Financial Implications: Monetizing a hobby transforms it into a business, necessitating a deeper understanding of customer needs and market dynamics.

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Poker as a Metaphor for Business Strategy

Omar draws an analogy between poker and business strategy, emphasizing the importance of sticking to a strategy despite emotional challenges.

Seth Godin (10:34):
"When you're building a vibrant, resilient business, you have to solve the problem for a few people first. Focus on that before scaling up."

Key Insights:

• Strategic Discipline: Just as poker players must adhere to their strategies despite emotional temptations, entrepreneurs must remain steadfast in their strategic plans.
• Risk Management: Balancing strategy with emotional impulses is essential for sustainable business growth.

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Writing a Book: Defining Your Audience and Purpose

Omar shares his apprehensions about writing a book, fearing it must match the quality of Seth’s works. Seth offers pragmatic advice on targeting the right audience and setting realistic goals.

Seth Godin (17:26):
"Find the smallest viable audience—the 10,000 people who will be super glad they found your book and will tell their friends."

Key Insights:

• Targeted Audience: Define who the book is for and what problem it aims to solve, ensuring it serves a specific group rather than attempting to appeal to everyone.
• First 10,000: Focus on securing the initial 10,000 readers who are most likely to benefit from and promote the book organically.

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Saying No and Focusing Efforts

The discussion underscores the importance of saying no to opportunities that do not align with your strategic objectives.

Seth Godin (29:23):
"Don't work more hours or take on more clients hoping to get noticed. Focus on attracting the clients you actually want by delivering work they value."

Key Insights:

• Selective Engagement: Prioritize projects and clients that align with your strategic goals to build a strong, cohesive brand.
• Quality Over Quantity: Focusing on high-quality work attracts better clients and fosters long-term business relationships.

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Scaling and Keeping Strategy Simple

Seth Godin warns against complicating strategies as businesses scale, using Microsoft as a case study.

Seth Godin (26:54):
"Microsoft's strategy was simple—be the IBM of software. This clarity allowed them to maintain consistent growth until leadership shifts introduced complexity."

Key Insights:

• Simplicity in Strategy: Maintaining a straightforward strategy facilitates easier implementation and adaptability as the business grows.
• Avoiding Strategic Drift: As businesses expand, continually reassess and ensure that the strategy remains aligned with core objectives.

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Content Creation Amid Algorithm Pressures

Omar raises concerns about creators compromising quality to satisfy algorithmic demands, seeking Seth’s advice.

Seth Godin (41:44):
"Focus on creating work for the smallest viable audience that will be passionate about it and willing to share it. Avoid pandering to algorithms for fleeting attention."

Key Insights:

• Authentic Content: Prioritize creating meaningful and valuable content over chasing algorithmic trends.
• Word-of-Mouth Growth: Building a loyal audience that actively promotes your content leads to sustainable growth.

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Emotional Resilience in Entrepreneurship

The conversation delves into the emotional challenges entrepreneurs face, balancing passion with strategic decision-making.

Seth Godin (13:59):
"The difference between a hobby and a business is doing something for yourself versus doing it for someone else. Emotion is tied to personal work, but business decisions should be customer-focused."

Key Insights:

• Detachment from Outcome: Learn to separate personal emotions from business decisions to maintain strategic clarity.
• Resilience Through Strategy: A well-defined strategy helps navigate emotional highs and lows, fostering long-term resilience.

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Conclusion and Reflections

Omar wraps up the interview by reflecting on the invaluable lessons learned from Seth Godin, particularly the emphasis on strategic focus and understanding one’s audience.

Key Takeaways:

• Strategic Focus: Define a clear strategy that serves a specific audience, acting as a compass for all business decisions.
• Empathy and Understanding: Deeply understand and empathize with your audience to create solutions that genuinely resonate.
• Quality and Authenticity: Prioritize high-quality, authentic work over chasing superficial metrics like clicks and views.
• Resilience and Adaptability: Stay resilient by adhering to your strategy while remaining adaptable to necessary changes.

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Notable Quotes

• Seth Godin on Strategy and Empathy (04:10):
  "Empathy, which is imagining that other people have the power to say yes to you or no, is a key part of strategy."

• Seth Godin on Hobby vs. Business (07:15):
  "A hobby is something you do for yourself, but a business is something you do for your customer."

• Seth Godin on Writing and Audience (17:26):
  "Find the smallest viable audience—the 10,000 people who will be super glad they found your book and will tell their friends."

• Seth Godin on Content Creation (41:44):
  "Focus on creating work for the smallest viable audience that will be passionate about it and willing to share it."

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Final Thoughts

This extended interview with Seth Godin offers profound insights into the essence of strategic thinking in business. By emphasizing empathy, targeted audience engagement, and the importance of maintaining simplicity in strategy, both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs can navigate the complexities of building resilient and impactful businesses. Seth Godin’s wisdom serves as a guiding light, encouraging creators to prioritize meaningful connections over fleeting successes.

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Transcript

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[Omar Zenhom]

Comes to smart money management, one of the best pieces of advice is to make your money work for you. Well, Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, and you automatically earn cash back on all your purchases. That means there's plenty of opportunities to make that money work. So shop smarter, not harder. Basically, anywhere you go nationwide, it pays to Discover. Based on the February 2024 Nielsen report. Learn more at discover.com credit card Seth Godin is the godfather of marketing. He's founded two businesses, one called Squidooth, the other one's called Yo Yodyne that got acquired by Yahoo. Seth Godin is the best selling author of 21 books and his books are just legendary.

[Seth Godin]

If you want to build a vibrant, resilient business, you have to start by solving the problem for a few people.

[Omar Zenhom]

Hey everybody, welcome Back to the $100 MBA Show. I'm Omar Zenholm and today's episode is an extended interview with the godfather of marketing, Seth Godin. We're gonna be talking about strategy in our conversations because his latest book is all about strategy. This is strategy. The reason why I think this book is so important for all of us is that so many entrepreneurs, so many creators, so many builders, so many creatives start their thing, they work on their thing and they just get to it. Strategy with no direction really. And we've talked about why this is a mistake, how to come up with the strategy, and what are some things you should look out for, some pitfalls along the way. You know, Seth is just a brilliant mind. I'm so glad I got to sit down and talk to him. He's kind of a hero of mine. I've been following him for so long. He has a daily blog over at Seth's Blog. It's pretty incredible. He's accomplished over the years. He's built two businesses and his books are just like Legendary. The Dip Tribes, Purple Cow. This is marketing. All Marketers are Liars. There's so many incredible books that he's published. We're going to get into today's conversation about strategy, about why write a book, how to write a book. We're going to talk about his take on risk as well as what to look out for when you're building out a business and you're really trying to pay the bills, but at the same time trying to attract great clients with great work. So let's jump into that conversation with Seth Godin right now. Seth, so good to have you on the podcast. I was mentioning earlier that, you know, you've been a huge influence on me as I've been throughout my last 20 years in entrepreneurship, my journey. I've read so many of your books that have been a gut punch in a lot of ways. Lessons I needed to learn just in time. Whether it was like the Dip or Linchpin or Purple Cow or Tribes. Oh my gosh, All Marketers are Liars. These books have. It's funny because I think back of these books, I think it's kind of like I read these books in different chapters of my journey, and it really helped me along the way. I do think Purple Cow maybe was like your most influential book, but I do think your latest book, this is Strategy, just read it last week. And I do think that this book is probably the most important book that you've written because a lot of people in my space, the space I play in, it's online business, it's SaaS, it's courses, coaching, services. And people are obsessed with their product. They're obsessed with being unique and being interesting. And it's almost like strategy is like an afterthought. Like they don't really think about where I'm going. And I love your. Your. Your definition of strategy in the book being like a compass rather than like a detailed plan. Why do you think people just forget about strategy? And why is it so important?

[Seth Godin]

So, you know, when someone talks about empathy, we think they're being soft and they're talking about kindness. And I'm a big fan of kindness, but that's not what we're talking about. It's so hard to start something. It's so hard to find the resources to lean into it, to create something that the loudest voice in the room is our voice, the noise in our head, the one that has made decisions about what we would want. And so we walk into the world basically saying, if I were you, I would sign up for this. If I were you, you would realize how good this is. But you're not me. And I don't know who you are. And you don't know who I am, and you don't want what I want. You don't see what I see. And if we keep this drive of me, me, me, following the leader, tactics stuff, we will get frustrated really fast because people have the power to ignore us and to say no. So one of the four key parts of strategy is empathy, which is imagining that other people have the power to say yes to you or no, and that the best way to get traction, to help our business get to where it's going is to find people who want to go where we're going. And if there aren't people like that, make something else.

[Omar Zenhom]

I love this because it also makes you understand that, you know, it's so thought provoking because this idea of, like, it's not about, like, okay, I want to feel people's pain and make sure that they're comforted. It's more like I want to understand where they're coming from so I can see if I can help them or not.

[Seth Godin]

Yeah. So let's talk about the Stone Pony for a second. The Stone Pony, which is a dive bar in New Jersey in the United States, is the reason that Bruce Springsteen is Bruce Springsteen. Because he showed up in that bar as a struggling artist, and what he figured out is when he played certain songs a certain way, the crowd loved it. And when he didn't, the crowd didn't like it. And it's not like Bruce Springsteen had these songs in his head and he was born to run this way.

[Omar Zenhom]

I love it. I love it.

[Seth Godin]

It's that he wanted to make music that the audience needed to hear, not that he needed to hear it, because if he needed to hear it, he could have stayed home. Right. And so when you pick your audience, you pick your future. When we can define who exactly we are here to serve. Now we know what we have to do.

[Omar Zenhom]

I love that you went there because some of the people that listen to the podcast, some of the people that come up to me at conferences, they would describe themselves artists. They consider themselves. I'm an artist, I'm a creator. I put things out the world. Hopefully you're in my tribe and you'll buy my stuff. They rarely think about the audience. They're kind of building it for themselves. They're kind of building it to express themselves. And when I kind of talk about that, I talk about, well, have you talked to your customers. Do you know what they want? Do you know their pain points are? They kind of like cringe? They're like, oh, no, that's not who I am. What do you say to that?

[Seth Godin]

Well, there's room for following your passion, doing your craft and making art. That's called a hobby. And I love hobbies. I have hobbies. The minute I try to sell one of my handmade cherry wood canoe paddles, it's not a hobby anymore. Now it's a business. The difference between a hobby and a business is you do a hobby for yourself, you do a business for your customer. So if you don't know who your customer is, you have a hobby and I'm in favor. But then don't try to make money from it.

[Omar Zenhom]

I love it. I mean, it's a good reminder that you are in business like you are serving somebody. You know, this is not just a chance for you to put art in the world and then hopefully live off of it. You know, which is interesting because I am proud of what I put out in the world. I'm just talking myself, you know, I'm proud of what I put out in the world. I know it's not great, but I am a lot freer, actually, when I'm doing things that are my hobbies, my interests, I get to kind of do things without worrying about failing. And there's. I don't think that I would be as good as a business person if I didn't have those things. Would you agree with that?

[Seth Godin]

Well, I would disagree strongly with you saying the thing you put out in the world isn't great. Right. I mean, people have an enormous number of choices when it comes to how they will spend their time, their attention, their trust, and their money. And they're spending it on you. Where you are putting out is great because that's what they want. And that is different than saying, I made this for me and now demanding that the world applaud you. And this is where small business people stay small. They stay small, they become bitter, they get broken because they're banging against this wall. You know, if you think that the, you know, the big influencers or the big whatever professionals in the world are like that in real life, you are mistaken. They are not. Most of them are introverts. They are just. They get on stage and something changes in them. They sit down at the keyboard and something changes. You know, maybe Stephen King writes in his spare time, but most people who write professionally write professionally because they already know the story. Writing it down and going through the editing and everything else, that's not for them, that's for the reader.

[Omar Zenhom]

It's so interesting. One of my favorite hobbies, actually, is poker. I love playing poker because it teaches so much about myself. It's actually a really good parallel with business. I don't know if you play poker, but for me, when I play poker, you always go into poker with a strategy. You always go into, like, okay, this is what I'm gonna fold. This is when I'm gonna start depending on my position on the table. All that kind of. You have all this strategy in your head, but then the strategy gets challenged by emotion. Like, in the moment your heart is beating, you see the other person, oh, this person's trying to bully me off the table. I'm going to show them. And then your ego plays a role in this whole thing, and then that's really when the strategy gets challenged. Are you going to stick to the strategy or not? And poker is really about, are you able to make the right decision regardless of the outcome in your life, in your business, in what you do, how much does your strategy get swayed by emotion? And are you conscious of it? And how do you reconcile that?

[Seth Godin]

Well, we'll talk about poker for a second. I heard a little Annie Duke in your last little bit there, and he's a friend of mine, world poker champion. And I got kicked out of the only poker game I was in. It was a league with the guy who did the Ghostbusters logo and four other creators. And it was like, small money. I went the first week, and I didn't have a strategy. I had tactics, but I didn't understand poker. Players were supposed to have strategies. So I won a hundred bucks and went the next week. And as I'm playing, I noticed every once in a while, a guy would say, if there are only two people left in the hand, to the person who was left. You want to split the pot?

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah, that's an option.

[Seth Godin]

Oh, that's really cool because you can do the math. That's diversification of the risk.

[Omar Zenhom]

Right?

[Seth Godin]

So I start doing that, and then I start saying, when there's three people left, hey, you want to split the pot? And at the end of that night, the organizer came over to me, and he said, I don't think you should come back. I said, what do you mean? He said, you're not here to play poker. You're here to just keep minimizing your losses. That's not what why we play poker. So that's just a little insight. Into who I am when I am being a professional. I put strategy way ahead of my emotion. I have shut down projects that most people would have stuck with for a few more months because I could see it's the end of the road. And even though there was something beating inside of me that wanted to prove that I could get through the other side, I knew there was no other side. We built Squidoo, which was a website to help people raise money for charity. We were the 40th biggest website in the United States. I only had eight employees. We were number 40, bigger than almost any TV network. And one day, Google turned us off. They wouldn't explain why our traffic went from. We went from number 40 to number 40 million in one day. And I did everything in my power to understand what Google was doing and why. And then I said, I can't fix this. We're stopping now. As opposed to following my emotion, following, which would have been fight the fight, and, you know, get through this. There was no through this. And I still think about that because it was painful to do, but it was the right strategy.

[Omar Zenhom]

Mm. I love it because it reminds me of my own experience. You know, I built a webinar software with Nicole for 10 years, webinar ninja. We recently exited that business earlier this year. And it was so emotional, making the decision to sell your business. And it was. It was so hard. But I got some advice from people that sold their business that is that if you're. If it's hard, then, you know, you're. It's the right time to sell. Because when it's easy, like, you're. You're selling low. You're selling when people don't want it. You're selling when you don't think that you can do anything with it. And I was so surprised how I thought I was a pretty logical, you know, first principles, thinker, all that kind of stuff. But when. When it came down to actually signing, it was a very emotional moment. And you could do all the strategy thinking. But in the moment, I think, I mean, obviously, we're all done. I was like, made the right choice. Awesome. Great. But why do we get so emotional about things like that? I was trying to. I was curious to hear you thinking about that.

[Seth Godin]

A long time ago, people decided work was personal. It was personal because if you didn't do it, you were going to starve to death. It was personal because it was your craft. It was the way you present it to the world. And then we amplified it by, like, bring your whole self to work and define yourself by your, your success or failure. So how could it be any other way but to feel this emotional way? Now the people who have many more zeros after their numbers than you and I, they don't think it's personal at that level. They're just moving cards around the table. Right? The reason that those people end up in a toxic mess is because then they decide that the only thing that's personal is how much actual dollars to have in the bank. And they start doing things they're not proud of to make that number go up. And I feel sorry for those people because they've lost the spirit of why people like you and I start projects.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah, that's, that's a good one.

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[Omar Zenhom]

I wanted to take this moment selfishly to ask for some advice. I've never written a book and I've always wanted to write a book. Yeah, I always wanted to write a book. The problem I have is I read amazing books like yours and I say to myself if I write a book, it's going to be at least as good as some of these books I'm reading. And I'm going to tell you this story and it really bothered me this situation we, I went to this meeting, meetup was all about book writing and there was a book writing coach and somebody telling you like, okay, this is how you become a bestseller and all this kind of stuff. And there's other people in the group that have sold books and published books. And they came to me and they said, Omar, you got this great podcast, all these listeners, you could just take some episodes and make it into a book and sell X amount of copies and you're a bestseller in one day and Amazon and this is easy for you. And I'm like, I had a visceral feeling, like I don't want to do that. That seems so wrong. And so like, I only have one shot at my first book and I want to make sure that it has meaning. What compels you to say, okay, I need to write a book about this? And how do you not, like, how do you resist the urge of like, this book has to like, change everybody's life and be like everything? I'm going to. How do you get specific? How do you choose a topic? How do you actually get down and make that decision?

[Seth Godin]

Well, this is a great case study. We're not going to talk about me, we're going to talk about Omar. All right, so we be. Because it's going to teach about all the issues of strategy that I talk about in this strategy, starting with this. Who's the book for and what's the book for? Because clearly everyone on earth is not going to read the book.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah.

[Seth Godin]

Who, who needs to read this book?

[Omar Zenhom]

It's for people that were like me. I was a teacher for 10 years and I was trying to find a way out of a paycheck and give them basically guidance on how to quit their 9 to 5 and replace their income with a full time entrepreneurship business? Something like that.

[Seth Godin]

Yeah, great. It's a great place to start because you didn't describe what they look like. You described what they're dreaming about. Right. Number two, is it for people who look to books to solve this problem or is it for people who haven't. It hasn't occurred to them to look to a book to solve this problem?

[Omar Zenhom]

I would say it's for people who look to book. Look to books to solve this problem. People are probably like, you know, reading other books in this area.

[Seth Godin]

Great. Much, much easier because now we don't have to start by, by teaching people to go buy a book, change the media. If you're looking for a book that will help you do this, here is a book that will help you do this. Yeah, that is a huge strategic decision. Okay. The what's it for Is I think based on how you describe people to help someone get from where they are stuck to where they hope to get unstuck. Right. Okay. How many people would need to get unstuck for you to feel like it was worth doing?

[Omar Zenhom]

Solid question. I feel like numbers are so arbitrary. I don't. I mean, I would say the reason. One of the reasons why I want to write a book is because I want to reach people that read books and don't listen to the podcast. So I want to get them on the path of, you know, first seeing that this is possible. So I don't think that everybody's going to actually see the finish line. So just getting people to read the book, probably 10,000.

[Seth Godin]

Okay. That's a fine number. This has nothing to do with being a bestseller. This has nothing to do with how do I get the word out, how do I hustle the thing? How do I find strangers to go read this? 10,000 is the right number. Your job is to sell the first 10,000 books. After that, it's the book's job to sell the rest of the books. Meaning you can write a book that 10,000 people, once they touch it, will not be able to go to sleep until they hand it to a friend or a spouse or a co worker, if that's what happens. So, you know, when I did Purple Cow for people who are watching the video, it came in a milk carton. And people. I only made 10,000 of them. What a coincidence. And some of the people who bought it put the milk carton on their desk. Why would they do that? They weren't trying to help me. They were doing it because by labeling their quest, they could talk to their boss about it, and then their boss might change the way they did things at work, and that would help everybody. So the side effect was more books got sold. But that's not why I wrote the book. I wrote the book so people would talk about the book. So who's it for? What's it for? We find the smallest viable audience, the 10,000 people who, when they hear that you made this, will say, without reading it first, I need to see this. I'm interested. Let me touch this. You already have the asset needed to alert enough of those people that this thing is ready for them. Right. So now we get back to where you started, which is, I don't want to write a book unless it's better than War and Peace or Steve Pressfield's the War of Art or some other book with the word war in the title. And I gotta tell you, I did 120 books before I had the first bestseller that had my name on it.

[Omar Zenhom]

I didn't know that. Wow.

[Seth Godin]

I did email addresses of the rich and famous. I did the Smiley Dictionary, which was the first book of emoticons and smileys. I did a book that replaced Cliff Notes. I did the Stanley Clapp Kaplan SAT prep books. So I wasn't born to write a book that was memorable. I learned the craft of making a book that people might want to read and talk about. So that doesn't mean you should ship junk, but it means you shouldn't talk yourself out of being generous just because someone with more practice than you did a better job. And the way I like to think about this is, let's say you're on the Gold Coast. You're working as a lifeguard. There's a lifeguard every six meters along the dock, and someone starts drowning right in front of you, you could accurately and honestly say that that lifeguard three down is a better swimmer than you and that they should do the rescuing, except they're 40 meters away. Obviously, you should jump in and save that person, because you're not a fraud. You're the best available lifeguard, right? And the thing is, you are the best available tutor for the people who already trust you to help them get stuck or to give them a tool that they can hand to their friends who are stuck and to hold back on that is to let somebody drown. Don't do that.

[Omar Zenhom]

That's great. That's great. I mean, I'm conscious of the fact that we're in or on a podcast episode, and I can't let that absorb for a bit, but that was very interesting. What I loved about what you just did in our little coaching session here was you allowed me to define the rules of my game. Like, I think sometimes we forget I've been in business. I've been running businesses for 20 years, and sometimes you forget that. That's the beauty of entrepreneurship, is that you can. You can define the rules. You can make your own utopia, as Derek Sivers says, you know, like, you can create your own kind of world. And it reminds me of a part of the book I wanted to kind of talk about. I got a bookmarked it before. Before this episode. And basically, it's about, don't bet on games you can't win. Anyway, let's talk about social situations. But I think also in business, don't create circumstances that make it hard for you to win. Could you elaborate a little bit on that?

[Seth Godin]

Well, you get to pick. So in the five years after Google started taking over Search, every couple months, I would Get a note from someone who said, I got something better than Google. I'm going to come out with a search engine that's better than Google. And they have no funding, they have no team. It's just them and an idea. And it's so secret, they don't want to tell anybody. Like you only have tomorrow once. Don't waste tomorrow trying to defeat the most extraordinary problem solution set in the history of mankind that you're not going to. That's a game you cannot win. So the reason you're doing it is because you know you can't win, so it's safe. Instead, find the smallest unit of innovation and, and practical productivity and go do that. Can you make things better for 20 people in your town? Can you connect the pediatric dentists in Sydney? Because the pediatric dentists in Sydney would like to be connected to one another. No one else is trying. You might fail. And if you fail at that, you'll have to admit you failed and you won't be able to blame Google. But you can start that now. And the only way to solve a big problem is with a little solution repeated over and over and over again. If you want to build a vibrant, resilient business, you have to start by solving the problem for a few people.

[Omar Zenhom]

In the book, you talk a lot about simplicity. You talk about keeping your strategy simple to make it easier to implement and to be sustainable. What are some of the threats that people can expect that will kind of complicate their strategy as they pursue it?

[Seth Godin]

Well, the biggest threat is that people are confused about strategy and tactics. So when the world changes, they want to change their tactics, which they should, so they're tempted to change their strategy. The second threat is scale, because as you get bigger, the strategy that got you there might not be resilient enough to go to the next step. So one of, one of the strategies that's easy to talk about is Microsoft's strategy, which they've had since a week after they were founded. And that strategy is be the IBM of software. What does that mean? The IBM of hardware was IBM and it meant IBM has so many salespeople and so appropriately conservative that no one ever got fired for buying an expensive thing from IBM because IBM would make sure it was better than mediocre.

[Omar Zenhom]

Right.

[Seth Godin]

And Microsoft doesn't have to make the fastest, most cutting edge, best design thing. They just have to make something that you're not going to get fired for because they have so many people to support your company, to save. Bet as long as they kept doing that they were doing fine. And when Ballmer came in and wanted to make it more ego driven and more complicated, the whole thing starts to fall apart. And so your strategy is this simple idea that says, where is there an insatiable desire? Where is there such a big need for something that it's going to be hard to fill it right away? And then how can we over time build assets and solutions that people who are trying to solve that problem count on us to solve it?

[Omar Zenhom]

That's interesting because I do think that, like you mentioned in the book, you know, strategies, like a North star, it's like a compass. I don't think people actually understand how important that is, like to actually like post it noted on their monitor, you know, like, because it's a good kind of thing to check every time you make a decision, like, is this aligned with my strategy, is aligned with what I'm trying to do? Is it going to get me closer to that direction or not? And the reason why I bring this up is because I do feel like a lot of people, their compass is just this like foggy success, like I want to be successful. And it's not really a real direction, it's like a mirage. How do you help people kind of choose a strategy, choose a direction?

[Seth Godin]

Well, so the hard part is choosing.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah.

[Seth Godin]

And you know this from poker, right? That the only thing that's fun about poker other than winning money, is you have to make decisions all the time. And what many people who are building businesses like your listeners are building.

[Omar Zenhom]

Right.

[Seth Godin]

Are actually doing is looking for a job without a boss. They hated having a boss. If they could just figure out how to leave that person out and do work all day and get paid for it, that's what they would like to do. And the problem with that is you have a new boss and they're terrible at their job. They wake you up in the middle of the night worrying you, they yell at you, they undermine you, they don't pay you enough, they don't give you a team to support you. They're you.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah.

[Seth Godin]

So you got to get a better boss who is making decisions.

[Omar Zenhom]

Right.

[Seth Godin]

And the fact that the decisions are hard is good because it means they're important.

[Omar Zenhom]

That's so good. It's so good because. And, and one of the things you talk about the book a lot, like, the reason why I think of poker so much when it comes to strategy is because I'm thinking about it as I'm reading your book. And when I'm reading it, it's like One of the things you say is part of the whole path of following your strategy is saying no. A lot, you know, a lot of people don't know that. Professional poker players, they fold 80% of the time. They don't even play. They just fold the cards. And it's just, no, no, no, no. I'm not playing this because my chances of success are quite low, and I'm not going to do it. It's also not according to my strategy. And I think in the beginning of the journey of entrepreneurship, I knew I fell into this my first, I would say probably three to four years, where you're so hungry for opportunity, you're so hungry for I got to grab everything. Plus, my parents are immigrants. Parents immigrated from Egypt to the US and you don't say no to anything. Immigrants are hoarders. It's sacrilegious to say no to an opportunity. But at some point, sometimes very early on when you have some success, you have to really get on the no train and start saying no to most things. How do you. How do you become conscious of this and become more good, more, you know, a better. A better person say no, and better at just saying no to opportunities that maybe are not aligned with your strategy.

[Seth Godin]

So I'll tell you two personal stories, and then I'll summarize it in a rule. But the two stories are, I got very lucky early in my career because when I was struggling, my uncle threw me a lifeline and got me a consulting gig for six weeks, and it made me enough money to be able to last six more months. The reason I was lucky is that the consulting gig was helping do the spreadsheet and financial analysis for a takeover of six nursing homes. So I had to visit these nursing homes. And particularly in the 80s, the disinfectant used in nursing homes combined with the lack of care, created a Proustian memory in my head that I can smell right this minute 40 years later.

[Omar Zenhom]

I know that smell. My mom was dietitian in nursing home.

[Seth Godin]

Yeah, I never, ever, ever want to do something like that again. So that was a really good way for me to remember. Pick your customers, pick your future. And then as I got into the book business, I did a book where we had 100 law firms as our customers. And law firms are never easy to deal with, but angry law firms are very, very hard to deal with. Pick your customers, pick your future. That was another message to me, which, like, if I'm going to do anything independently, I'm going to do it for people. I am Proud to work with who treat me with respect and dignity. And so that's what I learned emotionally. But the big insight here is this. If you're a freelancer, I'm a freelancer. I am proud to be a freelancer. Freelancers get paid when they work. They're not building something like you and Nicole built that you could sell. They're building their craft. My, you know, my words are all my words. And if I stop doing it, I don't get paid. The only way to move up if you do that is not by working more hours, because there aren't more hours to work. It's not by hiring junior versions of yourself because they're not going to work for you for long and let you keep most of the money. The only way to move up is to get better clients. And the way you get better clients, better clients pay you more, demand more, talk about you more. The only way to get better clients is to do the kind of work that better clients are attracted to. It is not by doing a good job for bad clients. And so if you are on fiverr or upwork and taking lousy work from lousy clients, hoping that one day you'll be noticed by a good client, is not going to happen. You're going to need to do the hard work to lay the conditions to build a strategy that attracts the kind of client you want.

[Omar Zenhom]

I think that is so profound, so important. If you're listening right now and you're doing gig work, if you're doing freelance work, if you're trying to get some traction, a lot of us, we just say yes to any kind of job so that we can, you know, get some portfolio work, get some examples, all that kind of stuff. I heard you say in another interview that, you know, you could do that. Just don't charge for it, like, do it on your own and. And display that work. You know, one of the things I learned in the film world, Nicole went to New York Film Academy and did a whole bunch of gigs. And one of the things I learned is that people do these, like, specs where, like, they'll make a commercial for Nike. And Nike didn't commission them to do it or anything. They just do it so they have it on the portfolio. And it's like a thing to kind of like, hey, I can create great work and they don't have to deal with bad clients, like you said. But at the same time, they can. They can attract great clients by showing the kind of work that they can provide to them. So I think that's so important. Like, a lot of us, we think that, oh, this is just reps I need to put in. And, you know, like, one of the things you learn, I learned through, through learning to get serious about working out is like, not all your reps are equal. Like, some of them are lousy reps. You know, the ones that actually a full extension and the stretch and all that kind of stuff. The ones that hurt the most are the ones that actually. So I love that reminder of, you know, hey, the quality of what you put out there is going to attract the quality of the customer.

[Seth Godin]

So I just want to insert a couple of things. As someone who struggled for a long time, you got to pay the bills. It's okay to take lousy work and get paid for it. All I'm saying is you need to pay yourself first with your time to say yes. But every day I'm a client for two hours. Every day I'm doing work where I'm the client that goes in my portfolio. Now I can pay the bills the rest of the day. That's fine, right? So let's say you want to make a living as a copywriter. One thing you can do is find a charity you care about and go raise a million dollars for them. I promise you, if you raise a million dollars for them, they're not going to say, no, we don't want your million dollars. Those posts you wrote, that stuff you put in the world goes in your portfolio. And now when you're looking for a good client, you say, yeah, I raised a million dollars for Save the Children. How'd you do that? Well, we can talk about it.

[Omar Zenhom]

I love that. That's great.

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[Omar Zenhom]

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[Seth Godin]

Oh, there's too many. There's so many. The secret is that my blog is digital. So when I find something particularly embarrassing I wrote 15 years ago, I just change it. I don't do that very often, but there's still a bunch of dead links on my blog. I would say the two most expensive errors. Well, one was expensive, one was a cultural challenge. The expensive one was I started an Internet company where we invented email marketing six, eight years before the World Wide Web, maybe 10, 10 years before the World Wide Web. So by the time the World Wide Web showed up, we were on AOL and Prodigy and CompuServe. We had built the most popular online game of all time. We had done all this stuff, and Mark Hurst, who worked for me, showed me the web and I said, that's stupid. That's never going to work. It's slow, it's clunky. There is no business model. We can't make money from this. Not interested. That cost me $50 billion. That's a very expensive mistake to make. It was a good decision with a bad outcome. And then the cultural thing is, I, like many people, naively believed that if you give everyone in the world a microphone, things will inevitably get better. And what we have discovered is that when there's an incentive in the algorithm to be a troll, to be negative, to be a jerk, some people will do it because they're in such a hurry to get to the next step, they forget that they're inside the community center screaming obscenities at kids. And I didn't speak up about that early because I didn't see it coming. And I think a lot of people now understand there was an obligation for the people who built these algorithms, the Googles and the metas and the other social networks, to bend it in this, in. In the way of community, not bend it in the way of division. And I think they made a terrible mistake.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah, let's talk about it for a moment, because I, I saw this clip from a buddy of mine, John O'Nolan, who founded Ghost, which is a WordPress competitor, and he talks about the Mr. Beast, beastification of the Internet and content in general, where people are now creating content to feed the algorithm, and they're not actually creating something great or something that we want more of in the world. And he's kind of encouraging people to, like, hey, how about start thinking about what, what, what do we need to create to kind of help people improve? People make, put a smile on their face, you know, you know, bring joy to people's, you know, life instead of how do we, you know, get more clicks, more views, and get more attention. I understand the need to kind of understand the algorithm and try to feed, because that's how you get successful on these platforms and, and not doing that is going to hurt you. What advice do you give to creators out there? Hey, I'm publishing reels, I'm publishing tweets, I'm doing all this kind of stuff, and I'm not getting any traction. I think I'm writing good stuff, but should I give in and, like, kind of play the game a little bit? Like, what would you do here?

[Seth Godin]

Well, the person you're describing is working for free, and their boss is the social media company. The social media company is making them nervous, so they will take action, so they will have a product to sell their advertisers. You're working for free, not going where you want to go. And the alternative is to stop trying to win the lottery. Someone is going to get 20 million views on TikTok, but it's probably not going to be you. And instead find the smallest viable audience. Find a group of people who, when they find you, A, will be super glad they did, and B, will tell their friends. So it's people telling their friends. That is almost every podcast that has succeeded. Podcasts don't succeed because they win some magic Apple algorithm search. They win because 500 people listen to serial and they can't stop talking about it. And now it's 5,000 and then it's 50,000. So work that we're proud of isn't these 12 secret tips, blah, blah, blah. Because that's. That's just lottery tickets. And you can't. You might win a lottery a little bit, but you're never going to win it often enough to make you glad you played.

[Omar Zenhom]

That's so important. I mean, I often say that I get asked this question a lot, like, oh, you know, you're running this podcast for 10 years. Like, what's the secret to the success? Like, my initial answer is a little bit of a joke. Like, if I wasn't successful 10 years, there's something wrong with me. Like, I should be successful by now. But first of all, like, success is such a vague word. The other thing is that I always approached the podcast thinking about, like, what makes Breaking Bad a good show, you know, what makes, you know, the latest Christopher Nolan film such a masterpiece, you know, and. Because if you kind of focus on how can I entertain, Enrich the audience in a way that. That maybe hasn't been done before, or maybe it's been done before, was doing a little bit of better your own way, everything kind of falls into place. I don't have to worry too much about the, you know, the. The. The outcome too much. And then that sounds like I know somebody's listening to this. And like, that sounds great for you because you've 10 years in. What. What do I do? Who's just getting started? How do I. How do I, you know, kind of work on the craft, pay the bills, get better, all that kind of. I understand all that stuff, and we all been there. My question to you is that, is it just better to admit that your first few years in business is gonna suck? Like, you should just admit the fact you're gonna. It's gonna be hard, and it's gonna just be difficult, and no one's gonna know who you are, but you just Gotta outlast that kind of rut. Because it sounds like. Because to me, the only way out of that is like hitting the lottery. Like, I don't know. I don't know anybody who's been successful without getting lucky like that. Or. Or, you know, maybe just hit the algorithm lottery. But most of the people I know that are successful, like, their first few years was just eating glass.

[Seth Godin]

Well, so it sounds like you go to the gym sometimes.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah.

[Seth Godin]

I don't. Hope it doesn't feel like eating glass to you.

[Omar Zenhom]

Not all days, I would say. Most days, no.

[Seth Godin]

Right. That going to the gym is the craft. The muscles are the thing you get at the end, but they're not the point. The point is the craft. I don't think when Nolan made Memento, which is one of the great movies of all time, he thought he was going to win the lottery. He just wanted to make the next film. And I think when he made Tenet, and it was terrible, that was part of being him as well. That you have to be prepared to disassociate from the outcome and do the craft. Right. And so don't quit your day job when you got five kids and a mortgage and student debt. But yes, spend four hours every Saturday and three hours every Wednesday night working on your craft. Spend those seven hours creating things for the smallest viable audience without regard for whether you're going to win the lottery. Because that's not going to feel like eating glass. That's going to feel like a privilege.

[Omar Zenhom]

Right.

[Seth Godin]

And for me, the hardest moments of being a struggling entrepreneur always came when I was. There was a scale mismatch when I needed something to sell because I had too much other coming in for expenses that I was getting very close to zero. Well, that was on me because I had built one side of the expense thing without building the other side of the income thing. That ruined my day right now. That doesn't mean you don't lean into the wind. You gotta right that when you learn how to windsurf, you fall into the water a lot, because that's how you learn how to win. Surf. But you better make sure you're falling into the water, not onto bricks. And, you know, my rule is when you run out of time, you run out of money. You're out. So don't run out of time or don't run out of money. Figure out where the boundaries are and then play an appropriately sized game so that you can play the game and learn the strategy, not say, this has to work and it's you Know, the media has fueled this by telling the story of someone, you know, who flies somewhere and with their last dollar, pull something off and then it works. Yeah, but that's not how it really works. That's just a good story.

[Omar Zenhom]

Yeah, I love that you said that. Because I think most of us, for some reason, we put this time constraint on ourself. We say, if this thing doesn't work in six months, I'm just gonna quit, you know, or like, you know, I'm gonna blog for four hours on the weekend or, you know, create my videos on Wednesday nights. And if it doesn't pop off in, like, six months, then forget it. Like, why are we putting this timeline? And then the funny thing is, is that, like, say, for example, you did put a timeline, but you gave yourself three years or something like that, or five years or whatever it might be. All of a sudden that pressure is lifted because we can't think really what five years means. It's not really a real thing in our head. And you start to create better work. Isn't that interesting? Yeah.

[Seth Godin]

Yeah, exactly.

[Omar Zenhom]

I love it. Seth, this has been great. I've enjoyed every moment of our conversation. I want to just end by saying that, because we don't actually. I have a lot of entrepreneur, a lot of people, great authors like yourself. I think we all kind of talk, hey, what are you doing? And how's life? How's business? And everybody says it's great and wonderful, and that's kind of where the conversation ends. What I want to kind of just communicate to you is because as entrepreneurs, as business people, as creators, we don't really understand what we're actually doing or how we're impacting people. But I want to say that you've really helped me a lot. You've really helped me a lot. And it's funny, because when I was reading your books throughout the years, I really felt like you were talking to me directly. And that's not an. I don't know how you did that. It was very hard to kind of square that. And, like, how does this guy know what I'm thinking? But maybe I was like, exactly your target market. But I just want to communicate to you that the work that you've put out there over the years, you know, I've been reading your stuff for 15 years, and it's just been incredible how it's helped me in little ways. And what I love about your work. If you've never read a book from Seth Godin, this is why I love him. He doesn't tell you exactly what to do because he doesn't know your circumstances. He doesn't know exactly what you're, where you're coming from, where your experiences are, what your skills are. He nudges you in the right direction and that is everything. It's like having an uncle to tell you, have you thought about this? And I, I, that's what I love about your work. And I want to, I, you know, I love, I love this is Strategies. Great book. But I just want to say in totality, what you've given me has been a gift.

[Seth Godin]

Wow. Thank you. Thank you for leading. Thank you for showing up. The way you're doing this means a lot to me.

[Omar Zenhom]

Thanks, thanks.

[Seth Godin]

Appreciate you, Omar.

[Omar Zenhom]

Have a good one. What a great conversation with Seth Godin. I could go on for hours with him, but his time is super, super short and in demand. So I was glad to have the time I had with him. One of the biggest takeaways I had from today's conversation was stop doing things that don't work for you. That strategy of trying to be successful, trying to be something, build something, do something, whatever. It's writing a book or creating a business or creating some sort of product or a software. A lot of us are chasing things that we think are signals or tokens of success when really we just need to figure out what we need to do to get what we need in life, what we need out of the experience. That was kind of one of the hidden gems I got out of today's conversation. But if you love today's episode and you want to hear more from Seth Godin, you want more of these types of episodes, let us know in the comments below. If you are not watching on YouTube, go ahead and subscribe [e-mail] YouTube. You can also let us know by sending us a message over on our [e-mail]. Just click the contact link at the bottom of the page and we'll make sure to hear from you. And I usually reply to all the emails that we get, so thanks so much for listening and subscribing and being a part of this community. We'll see you on the next episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

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