Seth Godin: How To Scale in Your Niche

okay seth godin welcome to the show thank you Andrew great to be here wherever here is yeah well we're in Prague right now then we're about to you you're in Prague we're on we're in cyberspace who knows where so Seth be following you now for about 11 years I think since purple cow came out there must be in about 2009 2008 was it yeah Wow good rare yeah yeah so I'm gonna throw three things at you a nice to see where it goes one thing we'd like to talk about is is burnout because that's a topic that's close to my heart and the big part of this this show and this message that I'm talking about second thing is how to scale within a niche something you've talked about particularly this is marketing around the smallest viable market and I'd like to touch on that which probably links in your third part which is why playing safe is risky which was something that reset out for me when I read public Cal 10 years ago whatever another confession to make around that so we have time I'll share that okay so where do you feel most led to which we take this for you what would you you know your story is poignant and so many of us have had to deal with our own personal stories of burnout or others so I want to talk about that for a minute I've never met anyone who was burned out on lunch I've never met anybody who was burned out on walking from their bedroom to their little kids room right what causes burnout is not effort what causes burnout is stress and stress is caused by wanting to do two things at the same time so it is not stressful to be where you want to be it is stressful to feel like you need to do something at the very same time you don't want to do something it's stressful to feel like you have to do something well at the very same time when you're not sure you can it's that the very idea of stress in engineering is when there's two forces on something and so the way to narrate your way through burnout is number one clearly avoid any profession where everyone is burned out if everyone is burned out then there's something wrong with that thing but if some people can do it with joy and with stamina they are telling themselves a different story than you are telling yourself and getting clear about the story is the way we deal with stress so I am NOT stressed about writing my blog I've written my blog every day for 7,000 posts in a row mm-hmm I don't have stress around it because it's what I want to do and I gave myself permission a long time ago to stop doing it when it's not what I want to do and that very permission turns it into something I get to do instead of something I have to do so that's the first part the second part which gets this idea of scaling is there's a huge distinction between freelancers and entrepreneurs and most of the stress that people who run very small businesses are facing other than cash flow has to do with not understanding that distinction so let me take the two pieces mm-hmm freelancers get paid when we work so I write every post on my blog it's me if I give a speech it's me that doesn't scale it can't scale it's me entrepreneurs must do work that causes other people to do the actual thing that's getting paid for they cannot do the work themselves so here's the problem you're a successful freelancer you decide to become an entrepreneur you decide to scale but cash is tight a project comes along you're gonna hire the very best available person who's also the cheapest you know who that is you so you hire yourself over and over again which keeps you from developing a bench building an asset and doing your real job which is getting new clients which is scaling and so you're stressed out of your mind because you're both a freelancer entrepreneur at the same time you're not doing a good job with either one and this was a huge eye-opener for me cuz I was an entrepreneur I helped invent part of the internet I built a company I had 74 toys 52 of them reported directly to me that's incompetence but I loved being a freelancer so I loved that every game that Yoyodyne invented every innovation we had I could point to and say I was in the room where was my idea that was not good that's not good entrepreneurship and so now most of the time I'm a freelancer most of the time I am very clear I am doing the work the akimbo workshops the alt MBA I'm not in the often ba cuz I'm not freelancing my way to the old MBA the alt MBA I invented I built it once but it's its thing it's an institution and it's run by people better than me and that is the key distinction I forgot what the third thing was the third thing was was playing safe is risky which we'll come on to in a moment because but I just want to play on that what you just said because there's a few things I heard in there and the tension resonated with me because I think some of that tension is what I want to earn in the way of money and the job I'm doing yeah bring some tension so I'll do this job because it makes me lots of money and it gives me the lifestyle that I think I want but I'm not really in it so that can lead to burn I think that's what I heard in some of that yes that for one second okay that surprisingly is lazy and it's lazy because you know you're an uber driver doing two and a half shifts a day when you probably have the talent and hard work to make twice as much money working half as many hours if you did something that actually felt risky but what you're doing is hiring yourself cheap to do a job you'd be better off having somebody else do you should go earn what you're worth but that's gonna be scary mm-hmm yep yeah and the other thing that that you said resonated which was you're you're you say you do that you're a freelancer and you delegate that other work the all-nba and so on out to other people that that sounds to me like entrepreneurialism and scale that so you can do both yeah exactly but I'm at any given moment I'm really clear about what I'm doing so I the architects of the workshop and the arket so in that moment I'm being a freelancer but when Marie or Alex or Graydon or Taylor or Sam is doing their job if I am busy messing with them I'm acting like a freelancer don't do that not allowed so we we don't have a management structure here we have a studio and every person in my studio is responsible for what they do and my job is to be one thing the architect or the writer to be the person on a video but their job is to hire me to do things when they need it and I'm not pretending that I'm some sort of Peter Drucker manager I don't like it I'm bad at it I don't do it and so I can't grow this organization to more than seven or eight people cuz it would fall apart right and so what what advice would you have for somebody who is and particularly on those are watching this on LinkedIn a lot of recruitment consultants out there a lot of recruitment business owners on LinkedIn and they've built a business through brilliant brilliant recruitment you know engaging with clients meeting clients and doing all that good stuff before they know that they've got 20 people around them they've got to lead but the stuff they love doing is meeting the clients and now they have to let go I mean how does someone make that transition or should they make the transition if they love being out sorry the other way to ask this question is how does a freelancer move up right and the only way to do it is to get better clients if you start trying to hire junior versions of you you're gonna get stressed out of your mind that you know when you think about Russell Reynolds or any other giant recruiting firms there are totally different flavor than everybody who's watching this for everyone else is watching this you have a charismatic knack for what you do every minute you're not doing it because you're managing someone who's not quite as good not quite as brave not quite as hard-working as you you are subtracting from your art from your beauty stop doing that get smaller double your fee get smaller recruit higher paid people that's how you move up not by trying to build this entity that one day you'll sell and then you can relax which never comes right good okay and so one of the things I want to talk about as well was this concept of playing safe is risky and the reason why I set up a bit of a confession because when I read the book purple cow back it would have been 2009 when I read it the following year I took on the head coaching job for the British inline hockey team so like I said and I know you you played ice hockey as a kid I've read some way you had a little paint nose broke my arm and then I went in line for a while I never played in line but I I mean 20 miles 30 miles I used to love doing that right are you is it Buffalo did you play Buffalo did I make that up no I grew up in Buffalo playing hockey and then I was a hockey coach Yeah right okay right so I coached the British team and our mantra was playing safe is risky because what I used to notice with the players particularly when I first got involved that they were just keep turning on the puck they would see the opposition and he kept playing playing safe you know and and I wanted to play on the offense and I said hey guys playing safe is risky and I was in my mind because reading a book the guys just loved it and it became just this thing that we just kept kit and I didn't tell them that I read it in your book I'm like that's my confession I would me the price of the book is you can take credit for anything that's in it right right but within 12 months we went from being nearly relegated from the B pool to playing in the a pool we played against the Czech Republic we've tied with them to be the Finns I mean we just went way above expectations so that's that was our experience of this manner of playing Sabres risky and and I see in business as well you know entrepreneurs and I think it links to some of the things we've talked about already where they've got to say that leap or they've got a go to a new market or this idea of going niche requires some level of bravery and because you know I you know when I'm coaching someone they learn I said well you got a clear new avatar good at clearing your market is you just go all-in so can we just play around with that for a little bit just well think about think about who your business or a creative hero and I will argue that they fall into one of two categories either they got lucky because someone picked them because they were in the right place at the right time but most of them if you think hard are specific they are not general they made a bet on a very specific way of being in the world and it worked that's why they are your hero you will not be able to follow in their footsteps by being generic by being general we have to figure out how to be peculiar and specific to stand for something and you know you brought up recruiters so is it risky to obsessively focus on programmers for the top 20 investment banks in the world you know Rockstar 100 X programmers who get paid five times more than anybody else who blow people away that's all you do well in order for that to be all you do when you get a call to do any other search you have to say no that's scary mm-hmm but every single person who's gotten to the other side got there by saying no they got there by saying no I don't do that anymore I do this and if so if you want to get to the other side you have to begin by saying I do this but I do not do that I'm done with that and you have to have phone numbers for your former competitors handy so when someone calls up and asks when you say no call these people they do that and until you are sending people to your competition you're not serious about being specific all right that's a whole level of bravery particularly in such a competitive market like recruitment you know actually is one thing hanging over clients within the business let alone to other clients but it shows an air of confidence as well that you're serious about your market and the market you playing so it sounds like it's very much a mindset thing so this idea of really going all in on your smallest viable market something you talked about and this is marketing tell us a little bit more about that and how someone should go about scaling within their their chosen each right so it's interesting we teach this in the marketing seminar the number of recruiters who have been in the how many people tina-marie similar so far eight thousand ten thousand I don't recall one recruiter taking it and that's because recruiters don't think of themselves as marketers but of course they are because if all you're doing is processing data we don't need to pay you what we're paying you data processing is way cheaper than a recruiter you are marketing to two groups you are marketing to clients who need to believe you trust you see you understand you and have something to tell their boss about why they hired you and you are marketing to people who are happily employed because those are the people that are most worth recruiting that you have something to offer them these are stories that resonate with people and if they're true they work even better these are marketing choices and marketing is not advertising even though you're probably spending a lot of money on LinkedIn marketing is what or will you build who will you build it for who is it for what change are you seeking to make so where this all begins is can you name 20 people 40 people 100 people by name who this is for because if you can't be specific then you're gonna go back to being a generalist but if you can say specifically it's for people like this then you can make something that will overwhelm them with goodness and then you've solved an interesting problem and they will tell others but if you are afraid of the critics if you are trying to fit in for everybody if you are hustling then you won't do that and you won't find the confidence to actually do good marketing yeah that's and that's you know that again people are sitting I think but that's but I could help so many people you know I'm looking at my market and my product and not just recruitment but you know with your a personal trainer whether Europe I spoke to the guys are they doing team buildings that I could but I can help these people and I can help these people and how do I choose right well I applaud the generosity because generosity is at the heart of all this but here's the thing it's been a long time since someone made a profit selling milk but you can make a profit selling high protein cashew milk to people who don't want to drink dairy and are looking for high protein and have this price point in mind so it is not a generous act to make milk because if you show if you stop showing up with your milk no one's gonna miss you because there's another thing a milk right next to it that what it means to be a specific is we would miss you if you were gone and I got a say for most people selling most products and services they say they're being generous but really they're just saying I worked hard to get here please pay me yeah and then this is marketing there there are three questions that you ask is quite close to the beginning and I'm it just popped into my head I'm hoping you can remember what they are but there were three questions that really helped the lines of um rooted for what if forever change do you seek to make yeah well don't miss that it was okay yeah well you're gonna have to look up I am basically what I'm arguing there is that too often marketing comes at the end of the cycle of creating something and I am arguing that marketing is an intentional act and so what we ought to be able to say before we start it for people who believe this and who want that I am bringing you something that matches what you believe and helps you get what you want so for people who believe that they can find good health at a health food store who are looking for something new I am promising that this herbal supplement will help you find peace of mind right but if you're not one of those people it's not for you right all right if you're happy while you're already taking it's not for you if you don't believe in herbal remedies it's not for you if you think it's too expensive it's not for you fine fine fine it's for those people who believe this and that's scary yeah because if you say it out loud that clearly among your team they can correctly say either a there are no people like that which is entirely possible or they say yeah you're talking a good game but this thing you're making it doesn't matter so let's make something better okay yeah and I saw that that's something I've learned learning from you over the last few years is is trusting that the message you're putting out there as long as we're it's compelling there's a good product behind it that can help that person people will start to listen but people panic at the beginning so they put it out there and they there's no feedback loop or we start to doubt we start to worry that maybe there isn't a market for this but there's something about like cincy of showing up every day that is super important but before that kicks in we need to figure out how to be honest in the following way if I was one of these people who believed what I say and I knew what I know about this thing would I buy it or is it just not that good and second if one of the people you're talking about does buy it will they tell their friends so one of my best blog posts to call first ten and what it says is for most products and services and books and movies just tell ten people and if the ten people who trusted you enough to look at it don't tell anyone else then you need to make a better product right yeah first and I think that the truth of modern marketing is most stuff isn't very good right okay so how do you stand out what's in this in this busy market how does someone go about really truly standing out in the crowd the only thing I know to do is to get the ten people to tell other people right because that's how we found out about Psy's music video and that's how we found out about slack and that's how we found out about Google and that's how we go down the list all of those organizations we did not find out about them from the people who invented them we found out about them from somebody else and it's true that movies and political candidates spend a fortune on advertising but even then we rarely go to a movie because they ran an ad we go to a movie because someone we know said we should go to see the movie right mmm so in a business world then what are people spreading do people spread the product you should buy this product today spread because we talk about storytelling a lot and the purpose behind the product what are people really emotionally engaging with is it hey I should buy this or I should listen to this or follow this what comes first people only talk about you because it helps them not because it helps you right so someone buys an overpriced supreme t-shirt and where is it around not because they like the people at supreme but because they want their friends to feel inadequate and they want to raise their status that's why they're doing it people talk about Twitter so that you will follow them on Twitter not because they want to help Twitter but because their life will be better if they have more Twitter followers go down the list people talk about stuff that raises their status builds connection helps them get to the emotional place they seek to get to no one cares about you and if you come at this of you know lots of travel agents real estate brokers etc are stressed out because the internet gets rid of them and they're like well but I worked so hard to be able to do this you need a professional you know what everyone's ignoring them because if you can't give them a better reason than that there are narrow right right right so so such wise words is a waste and I'm sure what you're sharing with us is gonna be incredibly helpful for those are listening watching on LinkedIn Facebook YouTube or watching the repeat or listening to on iTunes I really appreciate your time I've been a huge fan for years now and continue to follow your work um if somebody is new to you you know they've this is the first time we've seen you where should people where should be the first place people go to learn a bit more or find out more if you go to a Kimbo calm a ki MBO data our workshops that's my podcast and if you type Seth into your favorite search engine you will find my 7000 free blog posts so between those two you'll have most of what you need yeah I get you blog des it's it's amazing you get that stuff out everyday and actually just on that for those that are curious about how you blog everyday because there are a lot of content writers out there ones trying to you know like you say be a marketer regardless of their role do you bat your staffed or do you just have moments of inspiration daily how does it work for you well I'm not a Content marketer I'm a teacher and I noticed things that's what I do for a living right I have four or five blog posts a day and you only see the one that I figured was the best one and of course I have a file stock piled up so if I get the flu they don't disappear but every single night I look at tomorrow's blog post and often replace it with anyone right yeah very cool very good well Seth thank you so much for joining me it's worth it it matters thank you so much I appreciate it all the best take care

Channel: Andrew Sillitoe

Views: 11,589

Rating: 4.9634705 out of 5

Keywords: sethgodin, thisismarketing, purplecow, recruitment, marketing, digitalmarketing, socialmedia, smallestviableaudience, andrewsillitoe

Id: ZM3s4LIzEOM

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 24 2020