Being "On the Hook" with Seth Godin
Graham Allcott 0:07
My guest today is Seth Godin. Seth is the author of iconic bestsellers like Purple Cow, Linchpin, This is Marketing and Tribes. He's also the founder of Akimbo and the alt MBA, the host of the Akimbo podcast, and much more. He spent 30 years as one of the most in demand authors and speakers on marketing and creativity. In this episode, we talked about his latest book, The Practice, a surprising and multilayered book and what it means to put brave and interesting work out into the world. And I took away some brilliant lessons around kindness, willpower, and generosity. This is Seth Godin.
I have a lot to talk to you about, primarily around your book, the practice, and which I thought would be a great place to start. And the cover of the book has these three words right in the middle, shipping creative work. So I just wanted to ask you to define those because you do that so wonderfully at the beginning of the book. So what does shipping mean to you? First of
Seth Godin 1:51
All right, so all three words matter. Shipping, is that act of taking it out of the private sphere and sharing it with someone else, putting it into the world? Because in that moment that we ship, it stops being something in our head and starts being something we made for other people? Yeah, creative is human Work, work, that might not work, work, that's generous. If it's been done before, if you're following a manual, it's not creative. And a lot of people want a job that feels that way. The problem is that you will be ground to dust, we will find someone cheaper than you, you will be pushed to do it faster and with less care. And then the last one is work. Because it's not something you're doing. Only for fun, you're doing it because it's your job, because you promised. And committing to be a professional to show up and say, I'm going to consistently do this is something that the internet has helped us lose the threat of because of all this false nonsense about authenticity and following your dream. I think that we are way happier when the work we do becomes our dream, not the other way around. Yeah.
Graham Allcott 3:04
And you talk there's a lovely thing in the book where you talk about the difference between a professional and amateur, which feels like it might be a useful thing to throw in here.
Seth Godin 3:13
Yeah, well, so amateurs, I love being an amateur, my hobbies, I'm an amateur and all of them on purpose. An amateur means the work is for you, you do the work the way you want to do it when you feel like it. To be a professional means that you make a promise and you keep it and you do the reading and you understand what's come before. And you show up in a way that your customer, your client, your partner needs you to because you said you would not because you feel like it.
Graham Allcott 3:45
And you talk in the book about this idea of being on the hook, which you explain as this is in Turkey, where they have the bread stores where the bread is on the hook. So I'd love you to explain that. And then it feels like it's a kind of metaphor that you return to various different parts of the book. So why is on what is on the hook. And why is it important?
Seth Godin 4:08
Well, what we'll do the core part of the metaphor first, which is most fish don't want to be on the hook. Like the whole it if you're afraid you're not gonna brag about the fact that you want to be on the hook. But if you're a professional, that's what you sign up for. Because it's about putting yourself on the line to make a commitment. And we hesitate to do that because through all the years of indoctrination in schooling, we discovered that being on the hook was a bad thing that you want to do the minimum you can to get a good grade, you want to get through the system with as little connection as possible. But if this is going to be our work in our life, I think being on the hook is the only place to be because it's when we're on the hub that we get a chance to do this generous work. And the story from Turkey which is only slightly aligned but I couldn't get it out of my head once I heard it. That at traditional bakeries in Turkey, when you go to buy a loaf of bread, you can, if you have some extra money, you can buy two loaves and say to the baker, put one on the hook, and it goes on the wall. And if a hungry person comes, they can have it for free, with no shame, no hassle. And this idea that our work pays forward, that it gives us a chance to make an impact as we'd like to have an impact made for us. I think that makes it a perfect circle.
Graham Allcott 5:31
And it's this very conscious idea of I'm very intentionally going to allow my work to be consumed, and then judged by the group of people that I decide should be the main audience for that work. So you've talked before a lot about resistance and the lizard brain going back to your book linchpin. So I'd love to hear more about how you deal with the concept of you being on the hook, versus when the lizard brain tells you don't release this into the world.
Seth Godin 6:06
Yeah, so I've not met many Healthy People who can put themselves on the hook with no drama, can put themselves on the hook without any fear. And so there's a temptation to just find a path of deniability to find a path where we can squirm out of it. And the problem with that is, it doesn't make us feel fully alive. And it doesn't allow us to make the contribution we can make. Yeah, and so I use that feeling of fear, that feeling of needing to flee as a compass. If I'm not feeling it, then I'm not trying hard enough. But then still, that would,
Graham Allcott 6:52
you would still have those racing thoughts. So you said at the beginning there in any, any healthy person has that sense of drama. And I'm putting you in the box of healthy person here. But so what what are your techniques? What are the other things that you feel resistance? And you feel like it's going to be the compass? And then you run away from? Or do you have techniques to help you overcome that? Like, how do you? What's your interaction with the lizard brain and resistance?
Seth Godin 7:20
Okay, so first of all, credit for the resistance to Steve pressfield. Because his book, The War of Art really opened my eyes to this, if you encounter a marathon runner, if they're telling you the truth, they'll tell you, they get tired when they run a marathon. But they might be the laziest person in the world on a Sunday afternoon, refusing to get up from the couch and using the remote. Because they use they're tired appropriately. They're not always putting themselves into a position of tired, they just understand that to run a marathon means you are seeking to get tired. So there are plenty of things in my life, where fear keeps me from doing them. And that's because I'm not a professional at it, I can say, Fine. I don't want to do that. Because I just don't want to deal with the drama. On the other hand, I picked the thing to be a professional at. And part of that means I'm going to get tired, which means I'm going to feel that resistance.
Graham Allcott 8:20
Yeah. And I've heard you say before that you you blog every day, because one day you decided that tomorrow's another day. And so you should just blog again. Surely there are days where you wake up and you you do feel tired or you don't feel like you have something inspired to share. Like what what happens then?
Unknown Speaker 8:39
Well,
Seth Godin 8:41
I think that most people there are days that they get up and they don't want to get out of bed. And they do. And their days, they get up and they don't want to shower and they do and their days, they get up and they don't want to go to work. And they do Yeah, because it's their job. And somewhere along the way between seven in the morning and 1030 in the morning, something shifts, and they produce something of value that day. And that is a practice. Having a practice means I don't decide to do something because I feel like it. I feel like it because I decided to do something. I only decided once about my blog more than 20 years ago. And now I don't have to have a discussion with myself What a waste of time to discuss every single day. You know, and if you want a ski vacation for five days, you're going to ski every day, even if the weather isn't optimal. If you live at a ski resort, you don't take tons of days off. Because Yeah, it's not good enough today, I'll just whatever. And if you do that too many times you'll the whole winter will go by and you won't go skiing once. And so it doesn't take you know, some of my blog posts take five hours to write but some of them take five minutes to write. And having this practice makes me better and so it's a privilege, and I don't do it out of obligation. I do it because I can.
Graham Allcott 10:05
Yeah. And so you talk a lot in the book about this idea of making the choice. And you know, stepping forward with a contribution. And so what what is your What is your practice look like? So do you write do you write every day? Do you have set times you have set routines? What's your, your approach to your own practice?
Seth Godin 10:24
Yeah, so I'm a little bit annoying on interviews about this, because I quote Stephen King, the the author. He has said that at writers conferences, the question he gets asked the most, is, what kind of pencil Do you use. And it doesn't matter what kind of pencil Stephen. And I'm not Stephen King, but my rituals don't matter. Because I know some extraordinarily productive people. My friend, Brian Koppelman, makes billions he did rounders, famous around the world, he has a very specific way that he approaches the day, totally different than mine. And that's totally different than john cage, which is totally different than Spike Lee, we go down the list. So given that creative people have nothing in common other than their creative, looking for their tactic isn't helpful. I find it the strategy matters more than the tactic. And what's the difference? strategy is something that doesn't change very often. And that you can tell your competition about it won't make any difference. tactics are constant little adjustments, and they're often done in secret. And everyone has different tactics. But the strategy I'm happy to talk about have a practice.
Graham Allcott 11:46
Yeah. So it feels like that. So I mean, that's a mindset at that more strategic level. Do you find that that allowed? Is it because of that, that you feel like you're going to, you're going to write regularly, so you don't need to have routine? Or are there times where you're every day? You're not writing any way or?
Seth Godin 12:08
Yeah, every day, I know that something's going to come out tomorrow. And if you know that, you are going to act differently than if you don't write if you've invited 20 people for a dinner party on Friday, you're going to spend lots of spare time thinking about what to cook. But if no one's coming over on Friday, you're not.
Graham Allcott 12:27
Yeah, absolutely. And tell me about your like, the the infrastructure that you have around you, the team around you. I think I saw something of yours A long time ago where you said, I don't have a PA, I don't have a team, I do everything on my own. And then obviously with a Kimbo, you created this much bigger entity around you. And is that something that you've changed your approach on over the years? Do you think about it differently now, as you're used to just how do you think about you interacting with people who would support you or your need for people to support you?
Seth Godin 13:02
Yeah, so you and I are talking about video, this is the whole thing. I Kimbo is an independent entity, I don't own it anymore. Because for five years, I built it. But I'm a better Freelancer than I am an entrepreneur. And I wanted it to become an institution of scale and impact. And I'm not the person to do that. And so they are a B Corp that are off doing their thing. Because as a freelancer, I understand that I need leverage. But the internet gives me an enormous amount of leverage. But I also understand that I could be sucked into slack and meetings and organizations and hiring and everything else. And I did it because I cared about the output. But I didn't do it because I like doing it. Yeah. And so this is it. It's just me.
Graham Allcott 13:58
Do you think that really plays into how you see leadership because you talk a lot about leadership, and it feels like to you leadership is a wide definition and making a difference in the world is leadership by its by its nature? Are you happier, where you're the creator of that or where you're the enabler of that.
Seth Godin 14:18
Okay, so, management and leadership are different, and some people can do both. Hmm. Management is using authority and power to get people to do what you asked them to do. And we need management in our world. And there are some people who can lead and manage, but I would rather do the scary work of leading and leave managing to somebody else. But if you can do both, by all means, yeah.
Graham Allcott 14:47
And when you think about leadership, what's your Do you have a particular mantra or a particular style and in terms of how you like to lead and how you like to Make those contributions?
Seth Godin 15:02
Well, I mean, when I'm leading, I would argue that I'm probably doing it one of two ways. There's this sort of public thought leadership of talking to people I will never meet and creating doors that could be opened. And then there's this, when I'm in an institutional setting, how do I engage with people so that they voluntarily choose to go forward. And my model there, it is probably best described as a studio model. If you think about Hollywood, during its most effective years, people come together, they work on something, each taking responsibility, the gaffer doesn't tell the best boy what to do. And the screenwriter is going to work with this team today in a different team tomorrow, but voluntarily coming together to make a thing is way more common than most people think. We think about a company is having, you know, cubicles and, and top down organization, but lots of things are built with cohorts of people who have chosen to come together, and they make promises to each other. So that is my model of leadership. But they're way more effective ways to, you know, when a land war in Asia or something.
Graham Allcott 16:19
Yeah. And one of the things that always strikes me from it certainly came across very strongly in the practice. And he's also the, one of the one of the sort of features of many of your blog posts is you It feels like you walk around New York, or whatever city you're in, or whatever town you're in, and you just see things you just notice stuff. And so I wanted to ask you, where that curiosity comes from? Is it very innate? And if someone wanted to get more curious, like, is that something that you can learn and practice to?
Seth Godin 16:56
Yeah, so one of my hot buttons is believing in talent. I don't believe in talent. I think almost nothing is innate. I've never met a six month old kid who could ride a bike or juggle or speak a sentence that was worth listening to. So somewhere along the way, we learn all these things, their skills, being curious is definitely a skill. And it is a skill that is burned out of kids, because teachers are most six year olds are pretty curious. And by the time they're 12, so I used to have one right here behind me. I don't know where it is, do they? Where you live have the drinking bird. It's like a glass thing that goes back and forth. So it's a it's a bottle, it's a glass of water? Yeah, it's a blown glass, sort of caricature of a bird. And it puts its beak into the water and then bounces back and forth and bounces back and forth, then it goes back to the water. There's no batteries or anything, you can look it up online. Okay. And so I set it up in front of four straight A students who are 12 and 13 years old. And I say there's the drinking bird look at it. How does it work? It doesn't work. And they look at me, and they go, we don't know. And they take out their pencils ready to write down the answer? Because that's what we taught kids to do, particularly high achieving kids is write down the answer, and we'll quiz you tomorrow. Yeah, no, no, I don't want to tell you how it works. I want you to figure out how it works. You can ask me questions about what it's made out of and theories that you have. But let's and it was such a painful half hour. And it's because it wasn't something that was taught to them. And these questions, who's it for? What's it for? How's it work? What are the side effects? Why is it like this? Why did that person do this? Because everyone is irrational and rational at the same time, everyone? Yeah, if they're doing a behavior, if there's a system in place, if doorknobs are designed the wrong way, why is that? And, you know, I had amazing parents, and they encouraged me to be curious in this way. And then I got rewarded for it in the outside world. And that stuck with me, but I don't believe it to talent. I think I needed to get curious.
Graham Allcott 19:16
Yeah. Cuz I think I'm quite curious in the way that I think and often, I'm known in meetings with my team as grams, the question guy, right. So we'll be you know, there'll be some groupthink going on or they'll be there'll be something developing and I just, I throw in the questions. Yeah, rather than the answers, but I, I don't know where that comes from me. But one of the things that's been a bit of a sort of hobbyhorse over the last couple of years is I don't know if you have the same in the States, but here in the UK, a lot of politicians will criticize the subjects of history and sociology and Media Studies. I don't know if that's the same In the States, but you can probably see where I'm going with this. But basically, it feels like those are the subjects that teach critical thinking, right? And much of where we're at with the response to COVID being a rise in anti Vax, you know, propaganda versus the fact that this should be the thing that kills like, this is like we're seeing a vaccine free world, right here with COVID. Right. So it should have been the thing that killed the anti Vax agenda. And actually, it's brought it to the fore. And I think a lot of that has to do with just in society, we've, we've not caught up critical thinking to the same level as the supply of information through the internet, right?
Seth Godin 20:45
Yeah, that's definitely part of it. I think that fear is, in fact a talent. People are born with fear, okay. And fear is hardwired into us. And now we are allowing an enormous, enormously powerful engine to profit from amplifying fear. Yeah. And, you know, how can there be breaking news every day. But sooner or later, it stops being breaking news and just starts to be normal. And the idea that people are making a living by pushing everyone to be disconnected, afraid, angry, and competing with each other, for who can come up with the most ludicrous stories, is clearly amplifying fear for and, you know, anti vaccine, there's a wonderful book called on immunity. And it is super level headed, it is not a diatribe. And if you read the history of the fear of vaccination, it has been around for a very long time. And it's not new. It has nothing to do with autism. And it is understandable because it involves blood. And it involves biology and involves public health and Epidemiology and statistics, all of which humans are bad at. And so you're correct, that school should teach two things, how to lead and how to solve interesting problems. And what to do about a worldwide pandemic is both. And yet, we have taught kids neither in school.
Graham Allcott 22:28
Yeah, absolutely. And I wanted to just talk to you a bit about kindness. And so I'm writing a book very exciting. Yeah, I'm very excited about it. And at the moment, I'm talking to people about what kindness means to them. And just the role that you see for for kindness in business. So I guess the first question coming back to, to leadership and to having a practice, what role do it feels like you, you often use very emotive language in the way that you write in a way that's very noticeable to me, because I don't see it so often in other people's books. So maybe let's start with that. Like, is that a really conscious thing, you talk a lot about generosity. And there's a whole bunch that I wrote down, you know, you've got, you talk a lot about generosity. You talk about ruckus, resistance, contribution, vulnerability, stuff that presumably, when you're going into businesses, and doing talks, or when people in business as a reading of books, doesn't actually fit often with, you know, the kind of cultures that they're in, in terms of workplace culture. So it was a really conscious thing to, to lace your books with that kind of very emotive language.
Seth Godin 23:46
What I found in 30 years of giving 1000 talks of interacting with 1,000,002 million people, is the tactics are all widely available. Everyone has the same playbook. Everyone could see what Howard Schultz was doing with Starbucks. He was happy to tell you, and then he wrote about it in detail. And yet, no one figured out how to catch up. Well, is it because the tactics are the challenge? No, the problem is that if you don't have the emotional commitment to the journey, the tactics don't do any good. And the easiest thing to do in a business book is to put together a set of tactics, that promise, proven solution that doesn't put the reader on the hook. Just do these steps. It will work. It's not about you. And what I found over and over again, is you can show up with the right answer, but if someone doesn't say yes, nothing's gonna happen. They're not gonna say yes, until they're willing to put themselves on the hook. And I have 400 stories of places where I could go and explain in detail how this was working and how their competition no We're not it's we'd rather wait. You know, the most famous one is Western Union turning down Alexander Graham Bell and the phone company, because the telegraph was working, the phone was risky, we'll know we'd rather not be I don't want to be that person who said yes, to this change, because the people around me will be stressed. And, you know, in our modern day, the problem with all the social media companies having so many people with stock options, everyone is surrounded by people who need the stock price to go up. And so they make short term decisions, because they're not willing to put themselves on the hook, emotionally, to go to the next thing. So the tactics don't matter as much as changing hearts and minds. So that's what I tried to do with my writing, and kindness. I mean, you've thought about this 100 times more than me, but I think that there's two kinds of kindness in business. The first one is the oil that lubricates the gears that keep the system running, which is that most people go to work, to feel, to make a living, but also to feel connected and respected and dignity, and to be part of something. And if you can make your profit go up in the short run by 1%, by being cruel and evil, to people, in the short run, your profits not going to work for long, because the gears are just going to crash against each other because most people are not there to make your profit go up. Most people are there because they're telling themselves a story about meaning, and worth. But there's a second kind of kindness, which I'm way more interested in, which is, you can be as kind as you want. But if you work at Philip Morris, and you make cigarettes, you're still killing people. Yeah. And we should we should own our work. We should be able to say I made this and I will take responsibility for what happened.
Graham Allcott 27:00
Yeah. So like with a Kimbo, so you built a Kim bone, it's become a B Corp. Which for those those people who don't know, so B Corp is an accreditation that says we're a company that has more to us than profit, we're going to contribute to society, we're going to think about our impact on the planet at the same time, was that were you involved in that decision to become a B Corp.
Seth Godin 27:20
I applauded that decision. It was part of the transition. But you know, kind of people who run a Kimbo it didn't surprise me in the slightest that that was important to them. And I said, this is exactly the kind of compass that makes sense, because it kimbos never going to go public. It kimbos never going to get acquired. So what are you here for? and having that sort of compass enables the organization to focus, even in the short run on things that will pay off in the long run?
Graham Allcott 27:52
Yeah. Do you feel like you've always had a drive to want to make a difference, like your definition of marketing? is quite a wide one. And you talk about people making contribution and making a difference. So is that something that you have always felt within you? And has that changed as you've gone through your life? Just curious about where that comes from?
Seth Godin 28:13
So Buffalo, New York, even though it's in New York is more like the Midwest if the US, actually, Oh, great. Did you ever Are you there?
Graham Allcott 28:25
I'm a I'm a big Toronto Blue Jays fan. Okay. And our triple A affiliate is the buffalo bisons. So I've actually been to a game of Buffalo just to just to check it out.
Seth Godin 28:36
Fantastic. So it's a small town, and I won the parent lottery, my dad was the volunteer head of the United Way. And my mom was the first woman on the board of the local art museum. Okay, always had a parade of people in our house, who needed help, who were looking for community. And I just was taught that this was normal. And I miss my parents every day. And I try to live up to that ideal.
Graham Allcott 29:06
Nice. Yeah, it's a lovely inspiration. Let's just think a little bit more about the world and kindness. And do you do you sense that? Like, it feels like kindness has been a theme this year online where people are just really craving that and really craving human connection? And do you feel like that's something that as we go into a more post COVID future? Are we going to see that continue? Do you think we'll see that fall back a little bit? Where do you see the role of kindness in business in the future?
Seth Godin 29:46
You know, I think it Milton Friedman didn't mean to completely disrupt the world when he made up the story that the only purpose of a business is to make a profit for its shareholders. But as there's been a evolution widening gap between big companies and little. And between the richest and the non richest, what people are discovering is that what goes with kindness is dignity. and dignity is essential that every thriving culture is built on dignity at some level. We can get there in lots of ways, some of which are more painful than others. And I'm hopeful that, you know, we gave a microphone to everybody. And a lot of the pioneers of the internet, me included, thought this was going to be an unalloyed good thing. I've always been afraid of anonymous speech. But it felt to me like allowing people to speak up. Because I believe that humans have something to say was a good thing. And the problem was the trolls grabbed the microphone early and loudly. And I'm hopeful that now people are going to take a deep breath and say, Well, maybe what we ought to be doing is being more intentional about this. And creating circles of people that we want to spend time with not simply be subjected to whatever the algorithm decides we need to that. I don't think it should be a valid business model to make people feel bad.
Graham Allcott 31:15
Yeah. Which I guess has been also the camera back to what you said before about the the print press right? Like the headlines. And all of that is it, it's almost like a very, it's like the worst form of marketing, right. Like it's marketing based on fear. It's marketing based on one upmanship, for that for the last scary headline making the next one even more scary.
Seth Godin 31:36
Yeah, and I, you know, the print media, I think, has two natural brakes on it. One is it costs money to print paper. And two is advertisers are paying a lot of attention. Social media is different, you know, it, we've been persuaded that the algorithm is immutable. It's not the algorithm, the one that highlights breaking news and, and tragedy and hate. Got that way, because they made more money doing it that way. And they could turn three dials, and it wouldn't be that way anymore. And at some point, my hope is that companies that can say, well, we don't have to worry about competition, because we're already a monopoly, we'll just turn the dial and say they are better off their shareholders are better off their employees and their users are better off in a society that's based on possibility and dignity, not one that's based on Armageddon.
Graham Allcott 32:34
Yeah, absolutely. Let's talk a bit more about productivity. And one of the sections of the practice that I really loved, was you talking about and saying no, and boundaries. And you talk about the idea of inbox zero. And you talk about the exact words that you use, but it's some something along the lines of it's, it's a noble thing to try and get to Inbox Zero, but it means that you're constantly focusing on the stuff that that has just come in, and is urgent rather than the stuff that's important. But then you talk in that same little section about, it's important to have really strong boundaries, and to say no, and sometimes saying no, to something is the most generous thing you can do for the work and for everything else. And I'll say, Yep, I'm totally with this part. And then you said something like, but if you say no too much, then it becomes a matter of ego. And you start using that as a way to resist the work more. So I'd love to just hear more about your thoughts on that. And I think you're someone who's, who's quite well known for two things, one being really clear on what you do and don't want to do, and secondly, on answering lots of people's emails. So I'd love to just know how you managed to do all of that.
Seth Godin 34:01
Well, I hope I'm known for something other than that, but it's my bad how I
Graham Allcott 34:05
look lots of other things too. But like, those are two things that constantly come up. Whenever I talk to people about you. It's like, Oh, I emailed Seth once, like eight years ago, and he responded straightaway, it was magic. And people are really touched by the fact that you make the time to do that.
Seth Godin 34:18
Well, that's nice. Yeah, it's nothing I recommend to people, here's the the point I'm trying to make is this. We only have a limited number of cycles to make the impact we seek to make in the world. There are lots of paths to do that. But I think we should be intentional about which path we are on. So if you're going to make only three movies in a 21 year span, working seven years on each movie, the obligation for you to your work is that each one of those movies probably has to have more impact on the people you seek to serve. than if you were going to be a You know, somebody who's making a short film every 30 days, because it just doesn't the math doesn't work, right?
Graham Allcott 35:06
Well, seven Fast and Furious movies in the same time.
Seth Godin 35:10
Exactly. Right. But there's so at some level, each of us has the chance to contribute something to the whole. And we have to do it in a way where we take care of ourselves, so we can contribute anything. But then within that, the question is, how much are you hiding? And how much of it is you conserving your resources so that you can do the work that you're proud of. And what I'm trying to argue in the practice is, we have been seduced into hiding. There are people in power who want us to hide that if we don't adopt a practice, if we just keep reading the breaking news and doing that super short term cycle thing, nothing but that we can end the day feeling like we did a lot. But we didn't succeed, because there's nothing that adds up too much. And so in my case, I said, if I said in 1996, if a human being cares enough to send me a non anonymous, generous note, I'll do my best to write back to them. I'm regretting having to keep that going. 185,000 emails later. But I'm glad I did it, because it allowed me to connect directly to people who wanted to impact my work and vice versa. But I don't use Facebook, I don't use Twitter, I don't go to meetings. I don't use Instagram. And I don't watch television. And so I've regained six or seven hours a day that most people have sacrificed. In those six or seven hours, I'm not spending the whole time answering my email, I'm spending the time creating moments where I can say, Okay, well, if I reserved This time, I better not waste it. What can I do that I can point to? And I don't have any magic. I there's nothing I have had access to that other people haven't had access to. I grew up with privilege. I'm super lucky, I'm healthy. All those things are great advantages. But it's not like the founder of the internet gave me a break. Right? It's not that my blog is in a place where you can't have your blog. So the whole idea of an open system that lets people contribute is magical. That wasn't even imagined 100 years ago, and, or even 30 years ago. So what will you do with these tools? That is the question, if you're going to use them saying, well, I need an agent and I need a gallery. Well, you're hiding. But if you can figure out how to develop a practice, then you might be able to make things better.
Graham Allcott 37:57
And there's a couple of things that you've said that I think also really trying with the ideas and the practice, but that really feel like me, like they come down to someone with a very remarkable willpower. So you know, you talk about you decide to do this thing, and then you follow it through, you decide to answer every email you made a decision many years ago, and then you might regret it, but you're not revisiting it, you're not renegotiating it. And the same with I'm putting out a blog post because I decided I was going to do it every day. Like that strikes me as quite an unusual level of willpower. And I'm just wondering, first of all, whether you agree with that, do you think you have more willpower than most people?
Seth Godin 38:36
I do?
Graham Allcott 38:36
Yeah. And
Seth Godin 38:38
I'm not sure if willpower is a talent or not scientists.
Graham Allcott 38:41
Yeah, that was gonna be my next question.
Seth Godin 38:43
Scientists that I know disagree about this. Yeah. And I do believe that even if you have a talent for it, it's a skill. And there are lots of ways to learn it, you can set up marshmallow tests for yourself, you can figure out how to take things out of your kitchen and put them in a place where you'd have to go for a walk to get them, right. There's all these ways that we know, to build a habit. And you know, power is a habit. But there are a lot of decisions that I have made through the years that I do not revisit. And it takes effort to do that. But then it becomes a habit and then it doesn't take effort.
Graham Allcott 39:25
And can you think of any decisions like that in your wider life away from work that you've had the same kind of response to or the same kind of approach to
Seth Godin 39:34
Yeah, like I haven't had meat or dairy in 30 years, and I haven't missed it in 29 not what I like, for money. I wouldn't eat a hamburger because I just have no desire to do so. And now it's much simpler. I I had surgery on both my shoulders when I was a teenager, and they hurt me every day and every night for 2530 years. And then one day accidentally I discovered That makes it worse. I haven't had a grain of wheat since it's done. Right? Yeah. And I just don't, because my work involves dancing with possibility and little tiny threads of stuff that might not work in indecision and magic. There's only a limited amount of that that people can tolerate. And so in the other parts of my life, I make it so that I don't have to do that there, too. I don't have to spend any cognitive load deciding what I'm going to have for breakfast, because I have rules. And that's what I do. And yes, I have probably missed out on certain kinds of sybaritic adventures. But that's okay with me.
Graham Allcott 40:46
And we've got a couple of minutes left before we finish up. So one of the questions I wanted to ask you is, you talked about in the book, and the idea of when you're moving on to the next creative thing, that you have to ask yourself that question, do I care enough to do it again? So I just want to ask you, have you ever thought Screw it, I'm done. I've done 20 odd books, I've had a very successful career, I'm now going to go and just, you know, do fly fishing for the rest of my life or something like that.
Seth Godin 41:16
I think about all the time I've been, I think that all the time for a long time. Because the intentionality of it matters. I shouldn't do one of these books, or one of these projects, just cuz I have to do a next thing right away. I should do it because it's worth the journey. Yeah. Yeah, as I get older, it's harder and harder to say it's worth the journey. Because the incremental benefit to me is low. The equal benefit, I just believe, though, that the incremental benefit to somebody else, somebody new hire, and so that reflex kicks in. And I say, Well, I have this trust, I have this possibility. What will I do with it? And I'll make the commitment. But there are plenty of books I've started that no one will ever read. And, you know, there's 1000s of blog posts I've written that no one will ever see. Because it's not worth it.
Graham Allcott 42:15
Yeah. Well, that's reassuring, because even when you have those very high levels of willpower, there's there's other other forces at play there. That stuff. Oh, yeah.
Seth Godin 42:24
It's very noisy inside my head for sure. Yeah.
Graham Allcott 42:28
And I guess my very final question for you is, how do you look? How do you view success? What would success look like for you over the next few years? And what are you most proud of?
Seth Godin 42:40
I think they're related. When I see the work, people who have learned from me have done when I see what they have taught other people. That's what I'm keeping track of. Yeah, I would. When I can point to an institution organization, a body of work a person who has shifted, because I help them make things better for other people. That feels like a day well spent.
Graham Allcott 43:07
Yeah, well, over the years, you've definitely inspired me and shifted me in lots of different directions. So, Seth, just want to say thank you so much for being on beyond busy. It's been an absolute pleasure. So the book is the practice, do you want to just let people know where else they can find out about other things that you're involved with, or anything else that you want to share with us?
Seth Godin 43:25
So the creators workshop starts this month at a kimbo.com. And you can read all my blog posts and excerpts from the book and everything at Seth's top blog, se th s dot v l o g.
Graham Allcott 43:38
Perfect. Thanks so much for being on beyond busy.
Seth Godin 43:40
Our pleasure. Thank you for the work you do. I can't wait to read the new book. Thanks.
Graham Allcott 43:52
So have you enjoyed that one as much as I did, I've been a fan of Seth's work for a long time and had some really nice email interactions with him in the past as well. So yeah, just a delight to have Seth on Beyond Busy. And just want to say thanks to Matt and Lydia, and everyone at Penguin for helping to set that one up. This kind of marks - you might have noticed in the intro is a slightly more scripted intro than usual. And the reason for that is that we have moved the podcast into not just being an audio podcast, which it will continue to be but also being a video one as well.
So we're now available on YouTube. It's a brand new channel, we're trying to give it a push over the next week. And so in doing that, even if you're subscribed to be on busy as an audio podcast, I'd love it if you could just go onto YouTube, and just search for Beyond Busy Seth Godin and just subscribe to the YouTube channel as well. That would be really helpful. Just as a way of giving it a push, it would really helped me out. So go and spread the word on YouTube, share the links to YouTube around with people and just looking to get more views for that first YouTube video. We'll put them all out on YouTube going forward. All put together by Riz from our team, so just want to shout out to Riz for some stellar work in pulling all this together and making Seth Godin the first of our new video episodes. So that's it for another week. So just going forward, I'm gonna do all this sort of rambling bits that some of you hate. And some of you really enjoy a little bit at the end now. So if you want to hear what I'm up to, and hear me rambling on about the weather, and Toronto Blue Jays and things like that, then it'll be at the end of the podcast, not at the beginning. Some of you be sat listening to this going, Yeah, hallelujah about time, Graham, whatever. But yeah, if you want to connect with me, so all the show notes are as ever at getbeyondbusy.com, links to everything we talked about in the podcast, and all the previous episodes. And you can subscribe to my weekly email Rev Up for the Week, that goes out every Sunday, and the idea is it's just a positive or productive thought for the week ahead. And that's at Grahamallcot.com/links. And if you go there, you'll see basically everything that I'm doing right now including the button to subscribe to the rev up for the week email. So GrahamAllcott.com/links. If you have thoughts about guests that you'd like to see coming up on the podcast, you can always email them through to me Graham@thinkproductive.co.uk, and my DMS are open on Instagram, I'm just @GrahamAllcott. There, so feel free to add me there, and chat there and all that good stuff. This episode, as always, is sponsored by Think Productive. We take productivity training and workshops and coaching into organizations around the world, helping people to get stuff done and make space for what matters. If that is of interest, go to thinkproductive.com. And find out more there. And shout out also to Jess who has been putting together the new thing productive website, which is just about to go live as this comes out. So when you go to thinkproductive.com you might still see the old site, but you might see a brand new, shiny new one. And I think even if you've never been on our site before, you're gonna know which is which, let's put it that way. It's really exciting. So shout out to Jess as well. And I'm looking forward to making this the regular pattern of of Beyond Busy is that we're out every week, but also we're on video as well as audio every week. So please subscribe here on on audio wherever you get your podcast. And also if you could just go and subscribe, just for the sake of it to the YouTube channel that would just really help us to boost our views in the first week and get the channel off to a good start. So that would just really help me out go and subscribe and click all the bells and all that stuff on YouTube. That'd be a big help. But we're back next week with another episode is goodwill next week. I think you're gonna enjoy it. So until then take care. Bye for now.