Seth Godin: This Is Strategy

hello and welcome back to Franklin CV's twice weekly podcast on leadership with Scott Miller six years 400 plus episodes every Tuesday and Friday I am privileged to sit in this studio and highlight interview some of the world's most amazing thought leaders academics researchers creators artists people who have built something inspired someone else to do something sometimes they may or may not be a renowned thought leader or entrepreneur or entrepreneur sometimes they are people that aren't a household name and maybe they have done something or survived or recovered from something and have shown the courage and

stamina vulnerability to share about it to help all of us become better leaders formal or informal what whatever it is you are seeking to achieve in your life Franklin cvy of course the world's most trusted leadership firm whose mission is to inspire greatness in people and organizations everywhere today we have a repeat guest who has come at my invitation I refer to him as kind of the Jiminy Cricket of the world not a day or week goes by that I'm not in a meeting with a client or a colleague where I say well if Seth

heard that here's what he would say or here's what Seth would push back on that I'm probably misquoting him but I've read I think every book he's ever published and have been privileged to have interviewed him several times his name of course is Seth Goden he's a self-described iconoclast he's an advisor a coach he has educated thousands of people informally and formally and his new book is titled this is strategy make better plans Seth Goden welcome back to on leadership what a treat you're always so kind and for those who um are just listening Scott

is surrounded by some of the greatest books of our era I know some of the authors the way you show up hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times in a row it's really generous so thank you for doing it well I appreciate that Seth you and I have had the privilege I've had the privilege of having met with you in person three or four times you graciously have hosted me at your office in New York and you've been here in Utah with the Franklin cuy company I have learned more from you than any of the

450 thought leaders that I have featured on this podcast I continue to use you as my personal jimy Cricket when I'm getting ready to send an email out to someone who hasn't subscribed I step back and think what would Seth say about this when I think about giving up I say what would Seth think about this and so you've had a profound impact on my career including the idea around you know smallest viable Market versus total addressable Market you mentioned previously you are in icono class your new book is called this is strategy and so

I want to start first and talk about Seth we so often hear in conversation um well let's think about this strategically or let's be a strategic thinker you know when would you not think that way right who would admit to being a tactical thinker maybe level set and talk about why did you focus this next book on strategy I don't know very many strategic thinkers I don't think there's anything shameful about being tactical thinker that's what we were indoctrinated to do we were pushed from an early age to do our job to get an A

to get the answers and for someone to tell us what to do and when we're uh engaging in something we haven't done before we want someone to teach us the tactics so I thought in this moment of change it was important that we take a deep breath and understand what strategy even is strategy is a philosophy of becoming strategy is not a promise and it is not a map it is Instead The Arc because it doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction you're not going to get there beautifully said

uh Seth indulge me we're going to jump into the book here in just a moment but I want to have you rewind a little bit last week I had the privilege of interviewing Malcolm Gladwell also the second time on the podcast uh for the new book coming out um I think it's called revenge of the Tipping Point it's a whole new it's a really good book beautiful book and a whole new book right not a Rewritten book but he said something profound that I can't get out of my mind and he said it was actually

his publication of blink four years after the publication of Tipping Point that actually set Tipping Point on fire so to speak he four years of slogging and podcasting and and and and speaking and and promoting that it took four years for what he's mostly known for I think Tipping Point to actually catch fire through the publication of blink his second book of course you know Malcolm came to the table with a long history of writing in the New Yorker and other magazines would you do me a favor would you rewind a couple few decades because

when you think of Seth Goden you think of this you know influential abundant courageous icono class but the fact of the matter is you know you started in a way most people don't even remember in fact I think it involved like a like a Gaming magazine would you just indulge all of our future entrepreneurs and leaders where did Seth Goden start and how did you build to use my words the influence that you have earned through people trusting you today well I'm going to start in the middle because you brought up Malcolm Malcolm changed my

life he may have saved my life um I had written a book called permission marketing and it was important to me and to the world and then things happened in my professional life in my personal life and I was really at a standstill and I was sitting in a 3000t office every day by myself there water was Dripping through the roof and I was stuck I was fully stuck and in the mail came a galley of the Tipping Point that he his publisher sent me a note saying would you write a blurb for this and

I read the book in one sitting I wrote him a blurb and then I sat down and in 11 days I wrote a book called unleashing The Idea virus which obviously I had been thinking about in ating about without knowing it because you can't write an original book in 11 days and I sent it to Malcolm and I said I might have stolen ideas from you I hope I did not would you write this and if you are inclined write the forward for it and he graciously did and that kickstarted me back into the work

I was able to do so I will always be grateful for his grace and generosity but how did I end up sitting in that office in the first place um I worked at a software company when I was 23 years old it was best job I ever had because it was the only job I ever had and I left there to become a book packager book packagers think of ideas send them to book publishers and if they like them they buy them and on the first day chip Conley and I sold our first book 1986

for $5,000 to Warner books I got half so 2500 bucks I said to myself I can do this every two weeks I can make a living and then I got 800 rejections letters in a row over the course of the next year 800 times someone in book publishing cared enough to buy a stamp put it on an envelope and mail me a letter saying no and I started to learn about strategy after that and that's what got me out of that hole when I started my blog 20 years into it now the first week I

had 10 readers every Blog has 10 readers at the beginning your podcast your legendary podcast had the Boost of launching with Franklin Cy but even your podcast didn't have the listenership it has now that things grow over time we plant seeds in the right place we nurture them in the right way and if we've made good strategic decisions they grow Seth I don't want to belabor this but I think this is an important point right I don't think there's anything such as overnight success there's overnight Fame it's often ill gotten and fleeting but would you

just like double down on this for all of the people who are looking to do something abundant and generous influential in order to make a living just remind everybody how important the reps are and maybe anything you've I mean listen as you have said you know you can go super fast in the wrong direction and never get to where you want to go is there any wisdom you would give anybody and everybody who's looking to learn from your lessons tease out one or two um best practices if you will principles well the first one is

that generosity doesn't mean free and generous doesn't mean you're the cheapest or racing to the bottom generous means you're doing emotional labor showing up in ways that you don't feel like to keep a promise to people you've made a promise to and the second thing I would mention is it's easy to be busy it's easy to sign up for someone else's tactics but you have to be very clear about who it's for and what it's for if you're spending hours every day grooming your social media accounts you're basically unpaid labor for social media billionaires they're

not there for you so you don't need to be there for them and we need to be very clear about the people we seek to serve and the change we seek to make 21 bestsellers your current book is called this is strategy 297 connected but disperate but organized thoughts around strategy there is a theme forat heads that you refer to Time games empathy and systems I'm going to dive deep into six or so of these um ideas but would you just talk about Time games empathy and systems okay so we talked about time planting the

seeds sticking with your podcast even when you only have 10 listeners empathy means you have to acknowledge that other people have agency you are not in charge of what everyone does or what they believe or or how they act if you show up with what you do with your leadership and other people aren't interested in following you they will not follow you empathy surrenders our Authority takes responsibility and then opens the door for people to participate for people to enroll the other two are games and systems systems are often invisible they're incredibly powerful so the

solar system keeps the Earth rotating around the Sun not because it wants to but because of gravity the wedding industrial complex keeps increasing the cost of a wedding even though weddings aren't making people any happier the college industrial complex puts people hundreds of thousands of dollars into debt the credit card system is organized not on behalf of the person who's using a credit card when we see these invisible systems we can leverage them and work with them as we seek to change them and the last one are games games aren't Monopoly and Scrabble games is

a way of thinking to realize there are players there are moves There Are Rules there are outcomes and it keeps us from taking ourselves a little too seriously because if you make a move that doesn't work it doesn't mean you're a bad person it just means you made a move that didn't work and we don't have to stick with moves that are ineffective just because we made them in fact we can eagerly say oh I just learned something and make a different move instead Seth this is precious time with you today I want to ask

you a question and I'm going to get into the six areas of the book that I think I loved the most I read all 297 of your entries when you and I first met gosh I don't know 15 years ago you graciously invited myself and a colleague Todd Davis to your office and when you you made us lunch actually I remember what the lunch was it was a stir fry you made us lunch at your office and I asked you I said Seth I asked you a cooky question I said Seth what is your SIC

code kind of an outdated term your standard industry code you looked at me like I was a little bit off but with a twinkle in your eye you said good question and you said I remember where you were standing you said I think it's leadership which was interesting because you were most well known for marketing and business and strategy there's so much happening in the world of leadership right now with multiple Generations in the workplace and hybrid and postco and last week Amazon made big declaration around everyone back in is there a principle or two

that you might remind Inspire ignite in the millions of leaders formal leaders that are watching and listening today of how they need to lead go forward in a in a in in our new world that's evolving daily the biggest one for sure is that leadership and management are different things so I don't know how many people people work at Amazon maybe a 100 thousand but they don't have more than a few dozen leaders most people there are managers telling other people what to do with a stopwatch and a manual and that's one reason why they

need everyone in the office so they can watch them and there's nothing wrong with management it keeps things moving but leadership is different leadership is voluntary leadership leans into the Lial space and explores the things that might not work so you you don't have to be a leader but if you're going to be a leader that's what you've signed up for the discomfort of this might not work so that's the first one and then the second one is much more tactical which is there are only two valid strategies race to the bottom or race to

the top if you're racing to the bottom your slogan is you can pick anyone and we're anyone that we're going to build a company that is going to win by hustling to be cheaper and to be more convenient or your slogan could be you'll pay a lot but you get more than you paid for and that Mantra is hard to earn but if you earn that Mantra an enormous amount of Freedom comes with it Seth let's get into the book Number 96 again I think there was 297 of these thoughts that you will pine on

Number 96 what does it mean to be a strategic thinker we talked a little bit about this in the beginning but will you paint that that picture that archetype if you will is someone wants to uh be anointed to earn the right to be referred to as a strategic thinker what does that look like sound like feel like to those they're working with you know the future is an unvisited City but we can see it from a distance and part of what we're doing when we do strategy is we're making decisions we are making assertions

we are imagining where the seeds should be planted and what will happen over time strategies are easy to describe and hard to stick with strategies rarely come from a community that what we're looking for from someone with a strategy is for you to articulate who's it for what's it for what's the change we're seeking to make where's my smallest viable audience if I do this then that will happen and if I do this then that will happen and if it doesn't then this will happen if we can articulate those things it won't take very long

it will be frightening but it will alert us to the fact that tomorrow is not going to be just like today I'm going to skip around a bit and go back to 57 passion and our business model I'm going to pitch you a phrase that you wrote In the book as it struck me as kind of profound and again a little bit counterintuitive uh number 57 passion and our business model pundits tell us to do what we're passionate about and the work will take care of itself this is a brittle strategy some people get paid

for their Hobbies but not many the alternative is to decide to be passionate about what you do i i l this thought because we hear from so many successful people find something you love and you'll never work a day in your life that's about 0 z00 z% of most people um expand on that if you will well you know authenticity is for friendships and consistency is for professionals what the audience you're serving is looking for for is for you to be the best version of yourself when they engage with you if you choose to adopt

the attitude that I'm not going to get today over again so I might as well act like this is exactly what I would be doing you'll have a better day and your customers will benefit it's worth remembering that every person listening to this is far wealthier and Far healthier than the last king of France was we're royalty we have all of these magical tools and if your job is untenable then you should quit but if you are engaging with other people and making a change you can be proud of you can act like that's your

passion and it will become your passion and when you be are consistent in that way what you will discover is the days get better Seth perhaps I've taken some permission but I have on many occasions referred to you as my friend and people I think that's fair well thank you sir and that's nice of you and uh many people ask me so what is Seth Goden like and I say I always use the same word I say clear he's very clear uh on a num number of occasions I've brought Seth some speaking opportunity or perhaps

some collaboration and it usually goes one of three ways no but thank you and it's a very short CT conversation gracious but short or it might be um you yes because it was a very small ask and he felt or or so it's either yes or no occasionally it might be tell me more and the reason I'm mentioning this because I know in the words of BR brown right clear as kind you are one of the most clear humans I have ever encountered I'm guessing it's because you're clear on your values your mission your priorities

number 109 is titled the urgency of no and I think it's a this is a this is a defining separation of probably Clarity on values self-confidence prioritization talk about the um urgency of no and how do leaders build this discipline well I hope I'm never Kurt because I think Kurt means that you are deliberately trying to send a message to the other person I am trying to be kind and direct and clear if I say yes to something whether I like it or not I have to say no to something else and so do you

so does everyone you can't have four different things for lunch because after you've had one lunch is over saying yes to the curry means saying no to the tofu you can't have both so when we think about that and the service we are trying to perform the clarity about this of not giving other people control over us just because of when they showed up is essential if you're going to build a strategy so if you invite me to your wedding and I have to travel across the world and spend three days to come that costs

too much so I can say I love you thank you very much I won't be able to come it only takes 10 seconds of discomfort to say that compared to the three days of discomfort it would take to apologize to all the people I'm not going to be with and be miserable for three days was that was that a discipline you've always had did you learn that through a mentor a coach because you know it it's like Dr cvy would say you know says easy does hard right how did you build how did you build

the courage to disappoint people but at the service of your own finite time in the world no one's ever asked me that before I'm I'm going to say it's cuz I was unpopular in high school and that could have led to one of two options either I would seek to become popular by pleasing whoever I was with at any time or I would be comfortable with being momentarily unpopular in service of the longer game and thanks to the wonderful household I grew up in I picked the second one I'm going to move on 159 it's

called grabbing the last donut you teach a valuable strategy lesson in the ju position if you will of Amazon and Walmart take that wherever you'd like to go because there's even though most people can't relate to their Enterprises being like Amazon and Walmart you teach them great lessons in here regardless of the size and scale of an entrepreneur all right so I don't think um many people here can visualize what the world was like 24 years ago 24 years ago uh a lot of people still had modems and were calling into AOL 24 years ago

there was no social media whatsoever and the smartphone didn't exist Amazon had just gone through some real struggles people said they were going to go bankrupt but they were over the hump Walmart hired me to give a speech I flew to Bentonville Arkansas and there were 200 people in the room and as I walked into their Auditorium for their entire digital group there was a giant Banner on the wall and the banner said you can't out Amazon Amazon 24 years ago they gave up 24 years ago they said we see the strategy that Amazon is

pursuing and we know what it would cost us to compete with them what the distraction would be what the financial cost would be how it would undermine our stores so we're going to play our own game and we're walking away from that donut and if you add up the profits of 24 years it wasn't a bad short-term strategy now they have to hustle as retail continues to change but that choice the biggest retailer in the world gave up in the year 2000 that was extraordinary Seth how do you hope people digest this book it's a

very deliberate teasing together of episodic ideas and thoughts I mean you know I got seven of into them and thought okay I need to stop because any one of these could change the way I invest my time I lead my people I H how do you want people to benefit from this book well you might notice there are no page numbers um frustrating coule no it's not it's not it's not frustrating because half the people who engage with my books do it digitally by Audio or Kindle and those don't have page numbers so I gave

people numbers to talk about each one of the riffs why because if you digest the book by yourself it's not going to going to help very much but if you talk about it with other people it's transformative so the purpose of the book The reason I didn't just write a blog post is I want to challenge people to have a conversation it's when two people talk about it that the magic happens I'll just get credit for it but I didn't do it you did it by sharing with someone oh 179 how does that affect us

and I've seen this in real life I run a online community called Purple dospace and I made this into 45 videos which I shared with the people there and I got to watch them talking about the videos and they will all tell you they learn more from talking to each other than from the videos and I wrote a better book Because as I saw them talking about it I could rewrite the chapters of the book 197 you title may I see the org chart this was one of my favorite top two because it's such a

prevalent issue inside organizations in terms of understanding well I'm let you tell the story because I I thought I've been in this at my entire career sales and marketing business development relationship development and I loved how you wrote about the story uh tell the story and expand on it if you will yeah it was 30 years ago but I feels like yesterday and um I had a similar interaction with you but I'm going to tell it about IBM instead uh I was talking to IBM about our online marketing we invented email marketing all those years

ago and the woman at IBM a VP really liked our idea and she said hand me your pad and she took out a pen and she drew the org chart of her Division and she put names in all the boxes and she said you got to get this guy on board don't bother meeting with this person he's going to waste your time these three people will be in the meeting but they don't have any and she told me how the organization was built and what would be needed to sell something to them and when people

hear this they're shocked because it's supposed to be a secret why is it supposed to be a secret it's the division's job to do good stuff and if you're going to make sales people guess and waste their time who's benefiting from that and so you know when you and I have talked about different places you said yeah over here but not over here and being a guide to someone who is working with you to help a change happen is exactly what you need to do what the company needs to do what the person you're working

with needs to do but we got all hung up on this false competitive thing that it's a secret if you're not willing to show me the or chart don't waste my time I got other things to do Seth indulge me I'm gonna do a quick speed round with you because this is precious time for our listeners uh when you look at the totality of everybody you've worked with in organizations solar preneurs entrepreneurs around the world regardless of how someone defines success financially Mission driven whatever what do the most successful people have in common I would

say they understand what success is and that thing that they think of as success is coherent with who they really want to become that almost all the billionaires I know are fundamentally unhappy and they're unhappy because they think their job is to make more money which is absurd and to be truly successful you should be clear about what it is you're trying to obtain and be uh congruent in your actions to help it that happen you could Riff on this for hours uh what do most marketers get wrong good people educated what do like you

think about you know the traditional marketer who's maybe in their 30s and they've got an undergraduate degree and they're a product line manager or they're in a system or a culture that may or may not be rightly aligned with a strategy or no strategy for the millions of marketers who are lean in right now everybody's in marketing everybody's in sales uh part the seas most marketers are selfish short-term narcissists who want to try to get the word out who think that marketing is hype and hustle who are under pressure from the system because they're not

bad people they're under pressure from the system to make the weekly numbers or to get the clicks or to get the likes or the follows and as a result they sabotage their work that what it is is to do great marketing is to build and tell a true story that other people want to share that's not easy but it's simple is the thing you're building something that the right folks would miss if it were gone and they are eager to tell the others build that and the thing you think of as marketing takes care of

itself what's the biggest lesson you learned the hard way I am there are so many how about shortcuts aren't amen shortcuts aren't I love it I love it uh Seth I have a privilege in about an hour to interview Sal Con of course the founder of the Khan Academy he's written a new book about AI in education he's been on the podcast really good it's a lovely I know I was riveted um in his book coming out shortly um so much Obsession and hype on AI right now and the efficiencies and productivities and what it

means for the Global Order of the world and the future of employment and even spiritual Cosmic implications on the you know the viability of humanity uh it's interesting I interviewed someone yesterday who thought that AI was overhyped to the extent you have an opinion and a crystal ball which is absurd but you're you're a skip thinker and you are certainly a futurist tied with being a teacher is there anything you would like everyone especially perhaps the the leaders that are responsible for strategy in their organization some of us are responsible for tactics and executing as

we earn our way is there something you'd like to challenge our thinking on or remind us around where you see AI Landing that we should be prepared for creating strategies for okay so a couple credentials uh in 1983 I studied PhD AI with Doug linut at Stanford and then I worked with Arthur C Clark uh the inventor of Hal in 2001 so I've been thinking about AI for a very long time AI is the biggest shift in our world since electricity businesses that say we're not going to deal with it are like businesses that said

we're not going to use electricity on the other hand AI is a trick it's all in our heads it's just doing math it doesn't actually know anything when I add all that together I would say the following if you're viewing AI as a way to cost reduce and depersonalize what you do to dump customers into an AI system to try to use AI to replace people you're racing to the bottom someone's going to do that more than you on the other hand if you're using AI to repersonalized to create enough value that you can hire

more people that you can offer people dignity and respect and connection that you can come up with things that are not just simply convenient or cheap AI is spectacular tool and the last part of it is either you're going to put AI to work for you or you're going to be working for an AI Seth as we conclude would you remind all of our listeners and viewers about your blog you have done something that I don't know that any human and Mankind has done in terms of consistency perseverance uh talk about your blog would you

and would you just indulge me remind us how often with what frequency with what level of interruption because there's such great so many great lessons to be learned about your blog not to mention the content of your blog talk about the what the why the how and the frequency well the good news is if you have a daily streak and you keep it going no one will ever catch up um Seth stop Blog has had to post every single day for many many many years I have 9,000 posts in a row and I made the

decision 20 years ago that there was going to be a post every day so tomorrow there will be a post not because it's the best post I ever wrote but because it's Friday that decision informs my days because if it's Thursday I'm spending the day thinking about what am I going to add to the queue because tomorrow is Friday and that causes me to notice things it causes me to be more conscious of my words my attention how I'm teaching it lets me off the hook in terms of saying I don't have to have a

debate with myself is this good enough to blog there's going to be a Blog it's just is this the best one I got right now and when I add those things up I'm super glad I resisted the temptation of social media because that would have undermined the posture I'm trying to take not amplify it so I don't look at my statistics I have no idea what the click-through rate is that's not what I'm trying to maximize all I'm trying to do is write something that Scott thinks is good enough to forward to his friends and

that has happened numerous thousands of times um you describe yourself as a teacher I would also add that you are a futurist which means you're working on something that I should be interested in although your current book out is this is strategy and no doubt it'll become your 22nd best seller could you just share with us a glimpse about what is Seth Goden thinking about that might come out a year or two from now it be a course be a thought a Blog a book because that's a topic I want to get interested in because

if you're working on it that means it's going to be relevant so I I'm not looking for stock tips I'm looking for what's in what's next in Seth's head here's a useful lesson the answer I'm about to give you is true and we don't say it often enough I have no idea IDE Seth Goden your current book is called this is marketing make better plans 297 uh uh entries any one of which could be conversation for a team meeting um a huddle uh impact on strategy and Leadership such an honor that you would come back

and invest $35 minutes with us again today you said no to something today to say yes to this s send us off off I use you as an example almost every day of the week I happen to own a a literary talent and speaking agency and whenever someone comes to me who's launching a book and they talk about I talk about what their plans are and and they say well I'm not sure I launched my book you know four months ago and I say well how many podcasts did you do and they say well I

did four and I say well Seth did 140 um and so if Seth Goden can do 140 you're 80 then you can as well too um remind everybody um fast isn't always right but you put in the Reps I mean for everything you do you don't just float it there and think that your brand is going to lift it remind everybody of the value of not just hard work but the right work you know I don't think of a podcast with Scott Miller as something I have to do I think of it as something I

get to do and the minute that isn't true I'm going to stop doing it that I'm a teacher and you loaning me your platform for a little bit is something that I don't take lightly the Reps at the gym the people who are good at the gym don't view them as a chore they view them as the point and that's one reason why I'm not good at the gym because I view that part as a chore but this this is a treat and a privilege and an opportunity and when I think about my ancestors when

I think about friends I have around the world not one day goes by without me being grateful for the fact that I have this privilege and this chance so yeah you got to show up but don't show up because you want to get something show up because showing up is part of the deal um one of my key heroes in life is former President George H W bush a man of in my opinion impeachable character and he had a hokey phrase at the end of his administration we talked about a thousand points of light and

sir I think you are like the manifestation of uh a point of light what you what you inspire what you generate you're so deliberate in what you talk about and the words you choose I have learned so much from you thank you for your friendship and thank you for coming on today Seth Goden your new book is this is strategy everyone that listens to this podcast will be buying this book thank you sir thank you Scott keep making this Ruckus we need you thank you sir and we'll see you back here next week for a

new conversation on leadership [Music] [Applause] [Music]