Seth Godin | Why taking risk is actually safer than you think

kind of brand features the people who are making things happen get insights to grow your business from the experts who've done it get behind brand sponsored by DocuSign the global standard for key signature get your free trial at DocuSign com4 slash behind the brand hi I'm Brian Elliott welcome to another edition of behind the brand today I'm here with author entrepreneur thought leader Seth Godin Seth welcome to the show thanks Brian since you've written this new book Icarus deception I can't wait to talk to you about it and find out kind of your thoughts and on how it got started and where it's going talk to us a little bit about our to becoming an artist this is an amazing book and you're telling everyone that they may not know but they're an artist what's that about well you know writers we work with words and sometimes we make up words like Purple Cow and sometimes we have to repurpose them I needed a word to describe what human beings do when act like humans not small machines what we do when we are out there putting our stamp on something something that might not work and most of all I needed a word to describe the generosity and human connection that this kind of work makes so I called it art because we can agree that a playwright is making art and the Jackson Pollock was making art but it's also art when you go to a restaurant and they serve you a dish made with care just for you and it's also art when your insurance broker says you know there's a guy down the street who can sell you something better than I can let me go walk over then I'll introduce you to him that is not in the rule book it's human it's something new and fresh and so what my work has been about for the last little while is the distinction between the mechanics of doing what other people tell you to the mechanics of the dummies guide the mechanics of this is what I do all day how do I do it faster and cheaper I'm not interested in that right - how do we become artists because when we were for all of us painted a finger painting that had never been painted before we were seven we told the joke that had never been told before we were nine we walked up to someone and showed them we cared about them and then over time it gets burned out of us and I want to bring that back and we started asking for a roadmap to knowing oh yeah we got brainwashed into asking for roadmap so that that's what the SAT is of course that's what they test you for in school that someone who's good in school is actually someone's good at following maps then we get to work particularly in a bigger organization and it's not them saying figure it out use your best judgment it's them saying look on page 37 and do what it says that map reading mindset is putting us into a real bind now I think we need to figure out how to train our kids and train ourselves instead of looking for a map to look for a compass and instead of asking for directions giving directions and that's the thing about art right it's organic and unless it's paint-by-numbers it's often undefined and it might not work and it might not a totally different direction from where you started right well yeah I mean there's a village in China called Dauphin where they paint one-third of all the oil paintings in the world every day this is probably from there over and over and over again fast as they can that's not art that's painting painting isn't worth very much art is worth a lot sometimes when people hear this they recoil in fear because it's so scary and alien but most people who hear it you can hear the sigh of relief because it's what they've wanted all along what they've wanted all along is for someone to trust them enough to say go go make something have you got any backlash from the artists because I personally you need the painters I guess people who call themselves artists because you're redefining art the term you're expanding it of course and applying it to not just that medium but life in general I'm just curious whether you got any backlash that's interesting first of all I'm not read to find the art this is what art has always been art was always for amateurs until Andy Warhol you know Vincent van Gogh had never had any illusions that he was going to become a famous rich artist because it weren't famous rich artists became famous and rich and then you became an artist not the other way around so the other thing is that painters are angry at everybody right that the people who are toiling in the gutters of banal poetry are angry at everybody but true artists they're too busy to be angry at someone who's using a word in a way that they don't like that the Internet is filled with people who are using this opportunity to make the best thing they can and feel that people got nothing better to do but whine about how somebody uses a word that's awesome talk to me about the comfort zone because you mentioned this in the book a lot and I thought it was a great distinction of the safety zone the comfort zone Tuffle alibi so all creatures need a shortcut because we don't have time to reevaluate the safety of everything so if you take a mouse and put it in the middle of the floor and the light it will run away it won't say oh I'm in a dizzy movie this is great it will just run away because it's uncomfortable there because it's unsafe there and so in order to succeed organisms particularly humans have to build a comfort zone that matches the safety zone so they don't have to worry about whether it's safe they're sort of if it's comfortable because it's comfortable they're fine it's not comfortable they run away and I came to this realization because I was talking to a friend really talented and when she was looking for a job and I brainstormed 20 different things that she could do to get on the radar the places that deserved her and she said you know Seth that's not really in my comfort zone because the last time she looked for a job was 25 years ago and there was a method so in her mind comfort and safe for the same thing gotcha what I said to her is you know what your comfort zone isn't working because you only want to do things that feel safe and they're not safe they're dangerous they're going to leave you unemployed you can have to do this other stuff that feels uncomfortable but it's actually safe so the safest thing you can do is take a risk or what feels like a risk and the riskiest thing you can do is play it safe that it used to be you know 10,000 people went to Ford Motor Company one day to do their job like they did the day before and they all got fired on the same day because they had played it safe they thought but we're they really done is playing it wasn't their fault they got fired it was the idiot bosses who made ugly cars like screwed up but they got fired what would have happened in 1987 if the UAW had got on strike not for more wages but to insist that Ford make better looking better design cars think about how that would have completely changed the course of automotive history and saved the jobs of all of those people right but that wasn't the mindset that didn't feel comfortable so they didn't do it so the message is if you're standing still the world is moving you're actually losing ground yeah and if you're not you know there's two kinds of Labor there's physical labor which we did for a really long time and then there's emotional labor and that's what most of us get paid for right if you don't have calluses on your hands and you don't have dirt on your jeans you're getting paid for emotional labor and instead of hiding from it I think we need to embrace it if what you did today wasn't hard then you probably didn't create enough value because you probably didn't expose yourself to enough risk and fear because that's what we're paid for we're not paid to fill in TPS reports because we don't need those anymore that if you have a job where someone is telling you exactly what to do they can find someone cheaper than you to do it right you tuck in the book a lot about becoming more personal you say that we need to bring more humanity back into the work that we do and that's but that's a part of being an artist but how do we get more personal when HR department doesn't want anything to do with that right or the attorneys well let's be clear first of all about personal I don't need to know how many kids you have and I don't need to know you know this transparency can be taken way too far beyond what we need I don't know anything about Pablo Picasso's life I don't know anything about you know Edward Albee's life I don't need to all I need to know is that when they made their art they open themselves up because they put an emotion on the table now if you work in an organization that insists on keeping you in a tiny replaceable box you have to make a choice about whether you have a future there or not because one organizations like that aren't going to continue to thrive and to you're probably not going to reach the next level there because they'll just find someone else to put in your slot so the example that's pretty simple is three years ago the different apple and Dell is no one could blame Michael Dell for the products he was making they were obvious they were cheap and they were plentiful right whereas Apple would come out with something and someone say I hate that that's personal it's personal say here I made this and for someone else to say I hate that we're too focused on how do I avoid criticism and not focus enough on how do I make a difference so you think that's the stumbling block you think that's where people are getting stuck because they're not willing to be vulnerable to take a risk is that what this is about yeah so Renee brown has spoken about this more eloquently than I but vulnerability means putting something into the world and being willing to let the world respond or react if you come out with something that's polished and and has no edges on it and you can say the committee made this it's not my fault there's no vulnerability there right whereas if you know it's sort of I don't use a lot of sports analogies but suggesting Vince Lombardi and the typical corporate football coach today win and lose Vince Lombardi's on the hook today it's a system it's a process we you know it's velh Moneyball yeah exactly yeah and that's not personal there's no vulnerability there they're the highs aren't as high and the lows aren't as low in a world where we can connect to whomever we want why would we connect to someone who is boring and selfish we're going to connect to people who are interesting walking the tightrope and generous I kind of feel maybe just because I relate with this then it kind of takes one to know one and so I want to maybe get a little bit personal with you and talk about some of this talk more about vulnerability because it's it's not easy and maybe I'm over generalizing but generally I think for men it's difficult to be vulnerable to put yourself out there I mean we take risks sure you know we soldier through and do whatever right get bloody and beat up but to show our sensitive side and Rene Brown talks a lot about this too or she says it's a it's seen as a sign of weakness so did you ever have a time we struggled with this the being vulnerable I talked us about but I think it's something I deal with every single day and have for a really long time that part of what happens if you're going to be an entrepreneur or you're going to freelancer someone dancing on the edge is you're paying attention to the audience you want to know if you're making a sale you want to know if it's working you're not just phoning it in right so you know in the old days it was one phone call a day could make or break your day now it's one email every 10 seconds could make a break your day right you have to decide first are you open to letting the world have at your work yeah 17 books in I think I am 4,800 blog posts in I'm sort of hooked on this yeah then the question is what are you going to do with it when it comes back because it does come back you touch people and they touch you back so I have no comments on my blog I don't read my reviews on Amazon and the reason is self-preservation has nothing to do with vulnerability because I've put it into the world yeah but I realized I'd never met an author who said you know Seth I read all my one-star reviews on Amazon and now my writing is a lot better now it's just not what happens yeah so those don't exist if someone sends me an anonymous email I'm going to delete it but if someone and there's thousands of people who I have some sort of digital connection with has some feedback and something I've done I'm going to listen to it and I'm open to it and there's an exchange that goes on and more important millions of people are talking to each other about my work you have to be open to that you'll be ready for that to happen I am NOT saying you need to become some magical little echo chamber and that's why I don't use Twitter because I realized if I got sucked into Twitter it's like playing tennis with 150 people at a time you hit the ball once and then a whole bunch of balls come back you'll never be able to keep up with that yeah so part of this discipline is not becoming JD Salinger and living isolated in a cab but figure out how to be in the world learn enough from the world that your stuff gets better but continue to make things continue to put these ideas into the world I don't want to add one last thing I'm Yan topic because it's something I thought about a lot I was really fortunate before his illness and then when he passed away I got to be on stage once when sig Ziggler one of my teachers and it was 10,000 12,000 people and it actually is one that in a big stadium in Milwaukee and backstage I said so Tommy sig what do you do about that guy in the third row who's asleep like because I'm standing up there and I flown halfway across the country and I've practiced this thing and that guy he's asleep or he's not paying attention yeah I said and and Zig I'm giving him everything I've got I'm aiming all my photons and tachyons at him and he's just not responding how I can't do SIG's voice anymore but the zig tournament I said it's not for him it's that woman sitting next to him on the edge of her seat the one who came a long way to hear you speak the one who's listening to what you're saying is going to do something it's for her yeah don't take it away from her and give it to this guy he doesn't deserve it it's for her and once we learn to shun the non-believers once we learn to be comfortable enough to say it's not for you then we free ourselves up because no one can make something for everyone no one there's no product that everyone wants so you can either spend all your time trying to get the last person to like you what do you think I'm sorry it's not for you I'll go talk to these guys instead it's amazing the light bulb I think has gone on for so many people but that's what it's about I mean I think you mentioned in the book too there's this great example of is it Joshua Bell who's the violinist there and it's just about playing to the right audience yeah or not and it's what you challenged us to think about is you know if you're not getting the attention that you're looking for possibly you either a are playing to the wrong audience or B you're not making good luckily enough stuff right yeah and Josh builds great example the Washington I think I wrote this up he stood in the subway with a baseball cap on it thousands of people walked by nobody cared right and yet you could pack a concert hall a few hundred dollars a ticket right and it's just amazing the difference let's talk about picking yourself okay this is something that I think you've gotten good at but were you always good at it let's let's maybe unpack it a little bit about what it means to pick yourself and then give us some some personal story well all of us are surrounded by people who can't wait to get picked authors used to need to be on Oprah Clive Davis's autobiography just came out what could you do for a living you picked people we want to get picked by the local political party we want to be picked by our boss we get picked which authorizes us to do this art so I'm just waiting for poetry magazine to call me I sent them my stuff two weeks ago I don't know where they are I'm waiting for this job to come in right and what happened is that these gatekeepers all at once lost their power if you want to make a record make a record put it on iTunes pick yourself if you want to write write build a blog pick yourself if you want to start a software company you don't need a permit you know anything you just start it and so we see authors and writers and singers and entrepreneurs and physical therapists and anyone who wants to because we're all now collect one click away from each other raise they're gonna say I'm in here's what I make here's what I do that doesn't mean everyone needs to be self-employed that's not what I'm saying you can work for a big company and you can organize the weekly lunch book club why not there's no rule against it even HR doesn't care if you do that send a memo out to 50 people you meet once a week and you all read a book together that idea of picking yourself is available now because communication is so easy and what frustrates me to no end is you know some people read my blog and I'll get notes 10 20 30 40 a day saying pick me put me on your blog now I've never done that for anyone I don't make careers that's not what I do but they still are so desperate to be picked and all I've written a blog post called first ten and what the post says is give your work to ten people and if it's good and they're the right ten people they'll tell ten people no you have 100 and if it's good they'll tell a thousand once you have a thousand true fans you're in right if the first ten don't do anything with it your works not good enough or they're the wrong ten people so I send this link to the people who say pick me and about 80% of time I'd never hear from them again because they don't want to pick themselves they want the security and the deniability from someone else picking them right if you don't have time to do it right when are you going to finally do it over if you've got time to be rejected by 400 media outlets you probably have time to build your own media in the mean time right but we don't want to do that because it doesn't feel safe and I love the way you compare post-industrial revolution to where we are now which is the connection economy right I'll talk about that in a minute but I want to go back to the reason people are afraid to pick themselves I I think it's because they're afraid to fail I think they're probably stuck doing it the same way you know status quo this is the way we've done it for the last 30 years this is the way we need to keep doing it or your thoughts on that well I mean you know I'm looking here and I don't see al roker in the building or Katie Couric let me tell you I did invite Steve Martin tonight really and he declined he was either doing Saturday Night Live this last week or something else but I loved the ah you know homage you gave oh yeah I hit that so many cool things there and I invited him and he declined but next time he and I don't speak anyway you picked yourself right I mean two really great cameraman sitting here it's going to be seen by more people that are going to see the average local TV show you did that you just chose you didn't have to but you decided you can now why wouldn't other people do well it's not fear failure because if no one sees it so no one would know you failed because no one thought it's not like you're everyone's waiting for you to have this giant pratfall it's the fear of fear of failure what we are afraid of is having to admit to ourselves that we did something that didn't work that we think that that is when the universe will call us out as the fraud that we know we are then everyone is carrying around this little chip Steve Martin especially that there fraud and that to not get the response that people aren't going to laugh II like they did in high school no that's not the problem the problem is in your head you can see I told you is that where shame starts to play play and shame are the art killer yeah shame is what especially women girls use is used on them right to say how dare you you know we come up with words to describe people who are who have the you Burris to be vulnerable and to make art and we use shame to undercut all of that and so this black cloud of shame is at the heart of this it's the partner of the resistance Steve Pressfield great term and when shame and the resistance get together you're in trouble the answer it turns out is not to fight it it's to acknowledge it it's your compass for me when the resistance kicks in and says you shouldn't do that that's how I know I'm on the right path right that I look for that feeling and instead of fleeing or fighting I listen to it and do it anyway yeah and that is where we're going to make the impact that we deserve today you've talked about before leaning into the curveball running at the dog embracing uncertainty all these things completely not intuitive to getting through that kind of thing right because ordinarily it's a brick wall you let the words of other people or the applause or the lack of the applause determine your worth or how valuable your project is right and most people just quit yeah because it seems so comfortable which we think me and safe and so now there's this bitterness of people who persuaded themselves that the world owed them this stable risk-free life and now that the Industrial Age is going away and it's not being given to them they think it's someone else's fault well no they just didn't read the manual because the manual has been pretty clear for a few years which says we're not going to keep doing that sorry you yeah I mean I sort of understand why people would feel that way because the rules of the game have changed sure I get it you know go to college get a wretched degree get a fantastic job you're done you're set right and that's all gone exactly yeah exactly end but you know some of the people who are whining about it people in the newspaper industry what you just heard I'm not buying this you're in the newspaper industry you've been hearing about it for 14 years the first time I spoke to the newspaper publishers of America was 14 years ago if you were in the room you heard it and then you've seen it and then you saw Craigslist and then you saw this inside and for you to be sitting here whining that too many people are BuzzFeed and not enough people are reading your paper that you delivered to their house in a truck yeah I don't hear yeah so it's selectively listening or denial yeah because all creatures particularly humans will do almost anything to avoid fear and so when someone shows up you know the magic of the Industrial Revolution is the Henry Ford's of the world showed up and they said you don't have to be afraid you merely have to do what I say I will take responsibility and then I will make you rich that was a really cool deal and generations gave up their spark in exchange for richness but now the New Deal shows up and it says you have to be scared out of your mind you have to feel like you're risking everything and then some of you will get rich but all of you will actually have a better life because you're going to be human not cogs in a machine so how do we get organizations to change I mean as I start with us is that what it's about or is it about educating the people who are in charge because people are in charge are the ones that are warning the fingers and laughing and trying to shame us so here's the thing you needed people in charge if you wanted to build a giant new factory to make a new kind of chemical or a new kind of bottle you couldn't innovate without the big factory yeah the connection economy rewards little things little connections little followings so that if a programmer has 2,000 people who read her blog and she's good she doesn't need her company anymore if she gets laid off should get 10 job offers before tomorrow because she is connected to people who trust her so one by one as individuals build these webs of connection and trust the guys on top have way less power than they used to and that's going to force them to start to innovate and we see that starting to happen in Hollywood and we had already happened to the music business it's happened to the insurance business and the shoe business you know Tony Hsieh built a billion-dollar shoe store and he did it one bit of trust at a time yeah no fancy buildings no authority just one person who trusted him and told another person I love the way you talk about trust and attention is currency and that's part of the new connected economy correct yeah correct because there's a race to the bottom to make things cheaper but if you look at the prices at Walmart you know they have to level off because soon they'll have to pay you to buy stuff other so as that stuff levels off I can't grab a huge amount of market share by being 10 cents cheaper yeah it's just not worth it so how am I going to grow I'm going to grow by being 10 cents more trusted not by being 10 cents less expensive I think that's an amazing bit of advice for entrepreneurs people are starting their own company and I think it's subtle so I want to I want to underscore it because the mindset is I need critical mass you know I need a gazillion whatever yeah right and you're saying the connected economy no that's right I mean it depends I guess I mean if you're Facebook then you do need critical mass but you don't need it for most everything else well please understand Facebook ended up being worth a billion dollars when they only had two million members yeah that's what one out of every 3,000 people on the planet that's not critical mass that's not many people get coke this is tiny tiny number because what the investors saw is it led to trust and you know it in today's news we see that that app mailbox just got acquired by a company called Dropbox before they earned $1 in revenue right so what did they have anyone could have copied their design what they had was the ability to bring something to the market that people would trust with their most precious digital information their email and wait in line for weeks to get a hand on right so they demonstrated that they could do it for most people for a chiropractor it's a hundred people right for somebody who's selling insurance it's a thousand people who truly trust you so the question I would ask the entrepreneur the freelance or the consultant the person who works at a big company is do more people trust you and pay attention to you today than six months ago yeah and what are you going to do between now and six months from now it's going to radically change the number of people and how deeply they pay attention and trust you yeah because if all they're doing is tolerating you if the only level of attention you have is you own a piece of real estate and have to walk past your office doesn't count right that you know there's a financial broker I know in California not far from here and he makes a great living with clients all over the world not because they've met him not because they've been into his building but because he acts in a way that makes people say to other people I trust this guy yeah you wrote just recently in a blog post I loved it maybe you can elaborate a little bit on picking your clients so oftentimes we make the product we rush out to market we hope to sell it but you kind of flip the script explain that yeah so you know you first crossed my path a few years ago you told me that you were leading a tribe in Southern California how many people eight thousand ok 15,000 15,000 at the time it was 5,000 yeah well that group of people defines what you do all day that group of people defines what you're going to do next because you're not looking for new customers for your products you're looking for new products for your customers which is a big mind shift right well if you end up having 80 angry litigators as your client please expect that your life's going to be miserable yeah and your business isn't going to grow on the other hand you know if you look at like the Walt Disney Corporation who are their customers they pick them well if they're you know frustrated the four-year-olds have short attention spans and throw tantrums well it's their fault they picked four-year-olds yeah so you get to pick you don't say I have this great product who can I push it up you say which group of people are open to being connected or open to being led or open to being worked with to create art those people will be my customers I pick you now let's work together to make a business out of that oh yeah I love that I love that it comes it's all pre marketing it's all pre everything else I love that so it goes deception is an interesting title it's a metaphor obviously talk a little bit about Icarus and some of the myths that are out there and then let's talk about Comi Wazza great okay so myths are true they're true not literally but we made them up because they talked about our best selves yeah I love the fact that you reference Joseph Campbell by the way personal favorite right you know Campbell stuff is really extraordinary too you know the same stories keep coming up over and over again Harold's journey up exactly so you know the reason that we celebrate Thomas Edison is because you know the myth we talk about Thomas Edison is the person we would like to become at some point yeah well the myth of Icarus which his thousands of years old said the following Daedalus his dad was banished to an island for crossing one of the gods and the Icarus was there with him and they wanted to escape so Daedalus fashioned they always used the word fashioned wings for the two of them and then affixed they would say affixed them to their back with wax at this point they're the myths diverge if you read the myth today or in 1950 or 1910 it says Daedalus and Icarus do not fly too close to the Sun or the wax will melt then you will die Icarus disobeyed his father and perished well what's the lesson the lesson is listen to your dad don't have a lot of folks book do what you're told don't fly too close to the Sun you verse is a bad thing right that's actually not what the myth used to set in 1820 and 17 to and ten twenty and a thousand years before that the myth said what I just said and then Daedalus said more important my son do not fly too low because if you fly too low the mist and the waves will weigh down your wings and you will surely perish and I wrote this book because I think we're flying too low I think we need a lot more you Burress a lot less obedience and a lot more awareness that this revolution was just handed to us and if all we're using it for is you know to put up silly pictures of cats in the Pope we're wasting it so you're encouraging people to create a ruckus exactly because you know there's identity and throwing rocks and making a ruckus you're making a ruckus in the service of something worthwhile and the service of something generous that it feels way more risky to you than it does to everybody else but that if you do it in the small you'll get good enough to do it in the medium and enlarge and that's where the next innovation is going to come from and is about I want to talk more about thinking like an artist because we sort of define what an artist is but thinking like an artist then is is trying stuff that may not work it's starting someplace and ending up in a completely different place and not worrying about what the world says or how much applause or even money you get right if it's if you feel like I saw a thing to do yeah I in a few places in the book I try to unpack a little bit but one of the things that artists have talked about through the years is you must first start with the blank slate which is it's all on the table the other thing you have to do is learn how to see meaning if Jackson Pollock had lived 200 years earlier he wouldn't have painted the way he painted and if he had lived 200 years later he wouldn't paint it at all that it wasn't that he in his DNA he needed to paint like that wasn't that van Gogh had in his DNA that he needed be a painter instead they just decided to see what was around them and go one step further maybe two but not three you or three steps further you're not making anything that anymore wotz one step two steps that's whether that's where art lives but you can't do it unless you see and training yourself to see and not censor the thoughts that are coming to that's critical and then the third piece is you have to learn how to make you actually have to have the skills to do something that matches your vision and all too often we fall down on one or two or all three of those steps because we're in such a hurry we fall in love with ourselves then we put out a piece of crap but we say isn't this great no actually you might have thought something but you didn't know how to make it yeah and that's the dilemma we're having right now because it's never been as easy to start a company never been it's easy to get up a video yeah and now everyone has a soapbox right correct so in my mind quality is the new social proof right you know like that's what's going to dictate what gets noticed what gets attention what gets trust as if it's good enough for those people if they love it right that's right you have to it goes beyond love to feel compelled tell someone about it before you go to bed that's how good it has to be and you talk about you qualify that a little bit by saying it's also got to be personal you got to be willing to put it all out there to be able to accept the criticisms to be able to accept the fact that it may not work right well it depends on where you are on the cycle you know if I look at someone a rock group that's paid their dues like Indigo Girls Indigo Girls has 25,000 true fans every time they put something in the world they can sell twenty five thousand copies yeah right Amanda F Palmer same thing so Amanda doesn't have to crucify herself every time now because that group that tribe she knows what they're going to like and what they're not going to like and and I'm the same thing happened to me three or four books ago I stopped trying to get new readers I said I know how to get new readers I hate getting new readers I don't want to dumb down my work to get masses of people to want to look at it I mean if I put up a blog post tomorrow that was a list of seventeen numbered ways to have something happen it would go wild on Twitter because you can figure out how to do that yeah but I want new readers I want to take care of the readers I've got so for me writing a book now isn't about how do I expose myself to a stranger and get kicked in the teeth it's how do I take people who have trusted me and take them further than they're comfortable with not a lot further but enough further that both of us feel like we're going somewhere and that's interesting because it's been a process right I mean it's been a refining process where you've tried stuff you've failed and you learn what works and you do that right and that kind of essentially sounds what yeah what's not to failing you know and but the failing is quiet for most people it's as loud in my head you know 4800 blogposts more than half of them are below average right it says you it says any mathematician that's the way their averages work and then you look at the half that are below average you say why are they below average what did I learn from that where am I going it works and it doesn't work and what kind of language am i comfortable with or you know you give it a thousand or more talks and you discover in that fifty five minutes you have alone with a crowd what will work from an intimacy point of view want one where can you go where can't you and so the 10,000 hours rule is legit what's fascinating where people don't understand about it is it's possible to spend 10,000 hours to be diverse 10,000 hours to be good at many things yeah right so what was Johnny Carson good at actually he was good at being Johnny Carson yeah took 10,000 hours to be good at being Johnny Carson but that's what he ended up with so it's not just you you need 10,000 dollars to learn how to paint a portrait right maybe it's just 10,000 hours to be you know a jack-of-all-trades you got to work it out yeah you gotta work it out let's talk about rejection okay a lot of people get stuck here you know we touch a little bit on shame but give some pointers give some tips about how people can look past the rejection past the critic I love in the book you talk about how to handle the criticisms and how to handle shame you say basically that the words of the critic belong to the critic and shame it can only stick to you if you accept it right talking about that okay well I want to start with a small public service announcement for anyone who's a jerk okay which is some people take some of this learning and use it to become a jerk that they're going to singles bars and propositioning every person they meet that they are walking up to people everywhere they go in handing them a business card to sell them their thing that they don't need and they think that that is the path to becoming a great salesperson because it's about numbers it's a lot of attrition and they think that they're being rejected well in fact they're not being rejected a jerk is being rejected because they're not actually even present they're just putting up this facade anytime someone sends me a note and I politely declined they write back well does it hurt desk well actually it does for desk it hurts to ask because I won't very the same way next time and it hurts to ask because you didn't take the time to earn the privilege to ask and it hurts to ask because if you've gotten a yes by asking for something else you might have been easier to get a yes for the next thing next time so this idea you should just go around getting rejected for fun kicks because it's pretending that you're doing your work I'm not buying that but not answer your question one of the things I learned you know for about eight years I was close to bankruptcy when I was building my book business and my first year I got 800 rejection letters in a row 900 rejection letters in a row and it would have been really easy to give up there wasn't a lot of support for what I was doing in the house or out of the house and it wasn't working is there a line drawn in the sand like okay we're going to give it this much time and then go get get out and get a real job oh yeah I mean I had my own line which is if I ran out of money I was done and it kept getting closer and closer to running out of money of dancing right on that edge long time and I got very good at bootstrapping very good at playing it so that I wasn't going to run out of money because in my head still to this day I get to do this thing I love until I run out of money yeah so I'm you know and then what you have to go get a real job laughter go get a job as a bank teller I thought that was the the symbol for me of the worst possible outcome would be a bank teller because I'm not strong enough to dig ditches but it would have been like being in prison for me and when I came to understand is that the right kind of know isn't a know it's a I learned what doesn't work or no for now what it meant to me was the person who I had described my project to either was the wrong person for given their worldview didn't hear what I was saying the way I was saying it yeah because I could prove these were good ideas and some of them by other people went on to make millions of dollars so I know I was right right but that didn't matter what mattered was they didn't think I was right and that was it it's that transference of belief yeah that that's so critical so this idea and we had a database at one point I had nine people in my book group and we had a database in FileMaker Pro and if something got rejected there was a thing for yes and this is where the book is due or no for now all right there was no fields for no cuz I know for now or yes and we never became obnoxious we didn't call him back a week later with to remind them if we had a new story to tell them about a project we could go back to them right and that idea of the new story becomes critical when you think about rejection they didn't reject you they rejected your story they rejected the way they believed your story right so if you go back and do a lot of hard work and bring in the more proof more testimonials more of this whatever it is that matches the way they think about the world you have every right to go back to them and say based on what I learned from you we changed what do you think of this story yeah I have no doubt that Steve Martin will be sitting in your chair soon he has a new book coming out in April I think but really a novel no I think it's a you know it's not a book it's a he has an album coming out you know he plays bad I don't know that so we'll see no for now no for now exactly so what else could you share if someone's got a new startup you know and they're just not getting traction what would you what if it was the biggest mistake that people make is they built the wrong size company if you say I got a great idea but I need to raise twelve million dollars it's not a great idea because if you knew how to raise probably dollars you would have done it already yeah you need a rich uncle yeah if you say this is great but I don't make money until Bill Clinton buys it and I just got to find out someone who can get me in front of him bad idea so for me I went into the book business because every day this was years ago the people in the book business were buying 100 books to you a day every day yeah and they needed me because they didn't have enough books to buy there's a lot to be said for selling something people want to buy when you're starting and you know so if there's a tourist attraction nearby and you can figure out how to make a t-shirt about that tourist attraction stand up front that's a perfectly sized project for someone doesn't have a lot of money because you're going to find out in three days if you were right or wrong and if you were right you're going to make enough money to hire someone to tell sell those shirts tomorrow then you go back to doing what you were doing but you just learned how to invent a product create a product sell a product make a profit from a product in three days start there don't say you have this new app that's going to change the world if only four million people downloaded it it's the scale issue we have to often pick a project of too big a scale because it's safe because of course it can't work so we're covered and the last thing I'd say about this I got an email two days ago they got me very upset and this guy people if you're seeing this you should not send me an email because it's my addiction it's a bad habit I don't know me anymore I'm up but this guy sent me an email it said I believe that everyone is born with one good idea in life and I have mine I'd like to run it by you when I get an email like that if there's an attachment I can stantly believe it I never look at ideas send it to Mark Cuban yeah never look at ideas but what I say I can't believe you just said that sentence because as soon as you say that you've set yourself up to not being willing to fail because it's your only idea that's all the eggs in one basket yeah don't do that what you need to say is everyone has a good idea every hour this is mine and if it's wrong I'll have another one an hour from now so we'll see that's a way better way if you're sitting around saying I just graduate but I can't tell anyone because they'll steal it it's not a great idea so the new book is Icarus deception set amazing work as usual love it super inspiring keep it's great work you're very generous thank you for having me it means a lot I appreciate this behind the brand episode is brought to you by DocuSign global standard for e-signatures get your free trial DocuSign calm or - behind the brand you

Channel: Behind the Brand

Views: 354,620

Rating: 4.8918018 out of 5

Keywords: seth godin behind the brand, seth godin interview, seth godin icarus, seth godin the icarus deception, the icarus deception, seth godin icarus deception, Bryan Elliott, Behind the Brand, seth godin, business advice, inspiration, education, seth godin audiobook, seth, godin, entrepreneur, thisissethblog, Seth Godin Blog, Seth's blog, Alt MBA, Riskiest thing you can do is play it safe, Play it safe, Risk, Risky

Id: 3K7tYdUZZ_c

Length: 44min 27sec (2667 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2013