Hey, it's Marie Forleo and you are watching
MarieTV, the place to be to create a business and life you love. Now, if you want your work to make an impact
in this world, my guest today is one of the most thoughtful and prolific teachers of our
time. Seth Godin is an author, entrepreneur, speaker,
maker of ruckuses, and most of all teacher. Over the past quarter century he's taught
and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders, and fans from all walks of life via
his blog, online courses and lectures. He runs themarketingseminar.com and created
altMBA. He's the author of 18 bestsellers that have
been translated into more than 35 languages. His latest book, This is Marketing: You Can't
Be Seen Until You Learn to See, is available now. Seth Godin, thank you so much for coming back
on the show. Marie Forleo, thanks for having me back. I thought I blew it last time. Here I am again. It's great. Are you kidding? You blowing it doesn't even like... it doesn't
register. It's because you raise the bar so high. The work you put into it and the spirit is
such a privilege to talk to you. I adore you. Thank you. You guys, I know you just saw a cover. You saw it. This is Marketing, I'm gonna say this is genius,
this is a book you have to get for yourself, your friends, your loved ones, anyone who
cares about making change in the world through what they do. Seth, you have so many incredible books. Why this book, this topic, right now? Books are different than they used to be. There's so much work. It's a year, as you know or more. Then you got to go and bring it to the world. You just make a blog post, reach more people. Why not just make a blog post? Or why not publish it yourself? My last book I published myself. It did pretty well. There's something about a book that let's
the reader say to his or her peers, read this. The three of us, we're all gonna read this
and meet about it tomorrow. You can't do that with a Ted Talk, you can't
do that with a blog post because the book itself contained no batteries required. Here, read this. I run this seminar online called The Marketing
Seminar. I got to watch six thousand people go through
it and see how they changed and see what worked and see what didn't. I said, “Oh, I should write this down.” The book itself, once I made the course wasn't
that hard to make. Then I said I'm willing to go through the
pain of bringing it to people. Because if groups of people that want to make
change happen can share this conversation, they're gonna disagree with a lot of what
I said. Fine with me. At least you're gonna talk about it. That's why it's worth the journey. That's really freeing for me even because
as we were talking before the camera started rolling, I was telling Seth how I'm in the
last leg of my book right now. Can't wait. I love it. I'm gonna remember this. I'm like, highlighting this in my brain. People are gonna disagree with a portion and
that's fine, but to get them talking. You say in the book and I'm gonna do a lot
of this in this conversation, because literally I have so many highlights and so many underlines. You say, marketing is the act of making change
happen. Making is insufficient. You haven't made an impact until you've changed
someone. Right. A lot of people don't like marketers, more
than don't like accountants, which doesn't make a lot of sense because accountants have
a job and marketers have a job. What do marketers do? Here's what we don't do. We don't spam people, interrupt people, trick
people, force people to do things they don't want to do. That's a different task that calls itself
marketing. That's not what we do. Marketers make change happen. If you can make someone better, if you can
open a door for someone, if you can shine a light, that's the act of marketing. Because what you've done is brought an idea
or a product or a service to someone who needs it, and offered them help. A lifeguard knows how to swim. Until you get the drowning person to hold
onto that ring, you haven't accomplished anything. That's marketing. Persuasion. What I wanted to do once and for all is say,
that other thing that you don't like, that other thing that some people call marketing,
programmatic, and pop ups and pop unders and all that nonsense, no. That's not what I'm talking about. This is for us. Work that matters for people who care. You also write, “The answer to just about
every question about work is who can you help?” You also have “Instead we begin with a group
we hope to serve, a problem they seek to solve, and the change they seek to make.” Talk to us about starting with the human,
the person first. Not necessarily what we want to make or our
creations, but this approach. I'm gonna come in sideways a little bit because
one of the controversial ideas is that we need the smallest viable audience, not the
biggest possible audience. A lot of people have trouble with that. They say, why should I do all this work if
I don't want to reach everyone? If you want to reach everyone, that means
you've denied the people you're serving their humanity. Because you're saying you are the masses,
you are average. If you can pick someone, if you can be specific,
the smallest viable group of people and say I live or die with you. You are who I'm here to serve. If I can't please you, I didn't do a good
enough job. That's different. That puts you on the hook to see other people
for where they want to go. If that's not where you want to go, well then
they're the wrong people. If no one wants to go where you want to go,
then you are not gonna achieve what you seek to achieve. To be honest here, what we have to begin by
saying is, who would miss me if I was gone? Who will say to me thank you for bringing
me this? Some skeptical people say, that's impossible. No one wants life insurance. My answer is, so then don't make life insurance. Let someone else do that. You get to pick what you do. Do something worthwhile because it's gonna
take blood, sweat, and tears to go to the next level. If you're not who it's for, and what it's
for, and obsess about that because we don't do marketing to people. We do it with them because they have a choice
now. They didn't used to have a choice. With so many things a click away, they have
a choice. If they're not gonna pick you, then you're
out of luck. I love your simple three sentence marketing
template. I feel like for our audience and for most
people, especially if they're uncomfortable with marketing or they're still trying to
get over that other thing, I feel like I talk about this a lot in B-School as well. Part of my job with my B-Schoolers is to help
them unlearn a lot of the icky, aggressive associations that they have with what marketing
even is. Giving people a simple template I think can
be helpful for a lot of folks. Oh, this is how it is. Do you want me to read it or do you want to
go from there? I change it every time so you go first. Okay. “My product is for people who believe blank. I will focus on people who want blank. I promise that engaging with what I make will
help you get blank.” It's so simple. But if people started there, it switches the
entire perspective. There's all this empathy involved, which empathy
it doesn't have to be mushy and soft. Empathy can simply be a willingness to let
people be who they want to be and not insist that they be who you want them to be. The template begins with “if you are the
kind of person who believes blank,” if you're the kind of person who believes in authority
over affiliation, if you're the kind of person who is an optimist not a pessimist. All these different things, different people
believe. I might not believe what you believe, but
I'm okay with what you believe. You want a certain kind of change. Then this thing I'm bringing you, I promise
you will help you reach your dreams and goals. Let's think about Harley Davidson. I don't have a Harley. Do you have a Harley? I do not. It's not for me. That's because I don't believe blank, where
believe that having a 15 thousand dollar heavy motorcycle will make me feel more complete
or part of that group. I don't want that. If they go to people who do want that, then
they say here's our next one and that's why they don't make a competitor to the Vespa
scooter. Because they could and it would work, but
it wouldn't address the dreams and desires and hopes and fears of the people they seek
to serve. They don't make scooters. They make big motorcycles. Big motorcycles. When I think about the extraordinary success
you've had leading the people that you lead, you don't spend any time at all worrying about
the person on Wall Street who's not tuning in. It's not for her. You're right. Right? It's not for her. That's okay because there's so many people. You and I have big followings, which is such
a privilege. 98% of the people in the United States have
never seen your show, never read my book. 98%, fine. Nobody knows who the hell we are. It's perfect. Yes, totally. Absolutely. I want to talk about positioning as a service. This was one of my favorite examples. I actually shared when I was reading the book
over the weekend. Two of my friends I shared your example of
the piano teacher with, because I think it's so genius. I know that folks watching the show and I
heard this. I was speaking at an event in San Francisco
and a woman stood up and she started talking about it. She's like, but there's so much noise out
there. How am I going to stand apart? I thought when I read your ingenious idea
about the axis and specifically the piano teacher. Can you share that? Because I think people will see themselves
in a whole new perspective. Traditional marketers if you went to business
school or whatever, talk about differentiation. They talk about how do I cut through the clutter
and the noise? That's selfish. That says I've worked hard. How do I get people to me? Let's throw that out and say that person you
seek to serve, they have a problem. Their problem is just too much noise. Their problem is they don't know what to pick. The problem is they've got a kid they want
to educate in music but they're not sure how. Can I offer them a service to help them see
what their choices are? Now it's generous. In the case of the piano teacher, what I know
is that no one drives more than 20 miles to go to a piano lesson. Let's call it five miles. That's the circle of people who can send someone
to take a lesson with me. Then I can create axes and I can have as many
as I want but two is all that will fit in my brain. I get to pick what the edges are. Some of the edges could be cheap and expensive. Some of the edges could be kind or eastern
European in their strictness. Some of them could be focusing on jazz, some
of them could be focusing on classical. You can look at an axis this way and an axis
this way. If you draw oh this one, this one, this one,
this one, there's someone who's already over here, there's someone who's always over here,
but there's no one who offers this combination. On your behalf, I will live in this corner. If that's what you're looking for, great. If I talk to you and I realize it's not what
you're looking for, I will eagerly send you to that other teacher because I am here to
help you get what you want, not to persuade you that you are wrong. Yes. That shift is so important because it gives
us this feeling of sufficiency, which is not that I have to clear everything off the table
so I can go public one day. It's there's enough as long as I stand for
something. I can ignore the critics because the critics
are critics because it's not for them. Thanks for letting me know. There's someone over there who's for you. This is for someone else. Yes. I loved it. I was sharing with my friend too with the
piano teacher example. If someone gets excited and passionate about
being really rigorous and says, you know what? If you want your child to have the best chance
of winning in a competition, you want the practice to be like this. It's about discipline. It's about showing up. It's about winning, whatever that means. I'm the teacher for you. On the other end of the spectrum, let's say
you're a piano teacher and you're like, it is about the holisticness of the experience
and the creative expression and your child is gonna love playing. They're gonna tap into their ability to express
their emotions through music. Then you go to that teacher. I felt like that example was so wonderful
because it allows all of us to also say, not only what are the problems that the market
wants solved, but who and how can I best make those promises and exceed them? Exactly. Which leads to this crazy thing of authenticity. Because I don't believe in authenticity. I think authenticity is a trap. Here's how I know it. If you need knee surgery and you go to the
surgeon and on operating day she says, I had fight with my family and I don't really feel
like doing surgery. You're like no. Keep your promise. Be consistent. Do this for me. The drama in your head, not my problem. I want you to be a professional. If you show up in a marketplace where every
single piano teacher is rigorous and strict and wants to win prizes and you want to make
a living as a piano teacher, positioning as a service is you don't get to be the authentic
one who's just like everyone else. You have to be the consistent one who makes
a promise that says I'm here to serve your kids. So what I do is blues and joy and fun and
they want to come back next week. That's what I offer. In your spare time if you want to go be the
rigorous player of Beethoven, please go at it. If you're a professional, make a promise and
keep it. Love it. A counterintuitive––actually we talked
about this smallest viable market and you hit it. I want to read this because again I feel like
I get this question a lot. We're gonna re-underscore the importance of
smallest viable market. You said the challenge for most people who
seek to make an impact isn't winning over the mass market. It's the micro-market. They bend themselves into a pretzel trying
to please the anonymous masses before they have 50 or a hundred people who would miss
them if they're gone. The line of if you can't succeed in the small,
who do you believe, or how do you believe you'll succeed in the large? I don't think we can say this enough quite
frankly because when we do in an exercise in B-School about ideal customer avatar and
I'm having people just imagine for a moment, just a single person. People freak out. They're like, it's so much resistance. But, but, but, but, but. I want to serve everyone, serve everyone. I feel like this is a slightly different angle. It's like, look. Forget about tens of thousands or millions. What about the first ten? Exactly. Yes. Exactly. One of my… I don't remember many of my blog posts because
you know it happens. Daily. There's one I wrote called First Ten. What I say to people who say how am I gonna
get the word out? I say do you know ten people? Are there ten people who trust you? Are there ten people who will try? Everyone says yes. I said, when you bring your work to them,
do they say thank you and move on? Or do they insist on telling other people? Because if they insist on telling other people,
you're set. If they don't, then you need to make better
work or find the right ten people. Those are the only options. I love it. You can't buy your way to the masses anymore. You used to be able to. It's gone. On that tip, I want to turn a little bit to
the idea that all critics are right and all critics are wrong. This is so vital. Again, I hear this almost weekly any time
I go to an event, people ask about it. It's like, I'm so scared of having that Instagram
comment or that blog comment or that email or that video of someone just trashing my
work and saying it's no good. You said the critic who doesn't like your
work is correct. The critic who says no one else will like
your work is wrong. It's either good or it's not. That is not true. Right. Anyone who has an opinion, it's true. That's their opinion. They're not trying to win a logic prize. It's just I don't like that photo, I don't
like that baked good, I don't like this. Right? Fine. Thanks for letting me know. That might not be my problem. It might be my problem. We'll see in a second. The critic who says I've seen this movie,
I'm writing in the New York Times, no one will like this movie. That critic is wrong because that critic can't
know what everyone else will like. All they know is what they like. When someone shows up and says I hate this,
the answer is thank you. Thank you for caring enough to try it. Thank you for caring enough to let me know
that I shouldn't bother you again. Thank you for giving me a chance to point
you to someone else who will help you so I can earn some trust and repay your trust of
me. Thank you. When someone says no one should go here, we
just need to ignore that person because they're wrong. I feel like people forget that the most beloved
things... You use the example of Harry Potter and the
book that over 21 thousand reviews and 12% of them are one star. One star. The worst book I ever read. Worst book I ever read. Said to the author who made more money as
an author than anyone in history, “this is the worst book I ever read.” Really. We need to all remember that. Do you still, and I don't know because I don't
plan to. Do you still not read reviews on Amazon? Zero. Zero. I haven't done it in five years. People need to hear it. I stopped five years ago for a couple reasons. One: I realized I had never met an author
who said I read all my one star reviews and now I'm a better writer. Right? It never happens. First of all, you're never gonna write this
book again. The feedback on this book doesn't really help
you. The book is already done. Secondly, all it does is seize you up and
make you shut down. It's like, well you have the right to say
that. I don't have the obligation to read it. Thank you for taking the time, but no, I don't
want to know. Let's talk about the distinction between feedback
and advice because I thought that was subtle and vital. Right. If you say to someone, do you have any advice
for me? You will learn also it's a wonderful thing. If you say to someone, do you have feedback
for me? It feels corporate, it feels like they're
on the hook and they're gonna give you a different kind of thing. That is, if I were you, here's my criticism
thing. You're not me. Thank you for the feedback. Really what I was hoping for was the advice
and the advice might be on an emotional level. The advice might be you are in my target market. You're not me the creator. As someone who's going to consume this, here. Here's some tips. That's really helpful. The other thing that goes on in marketing
is marketing is about making assertions. We assert and for people who believe this
and who want this, this will help. We can't do that in the rearview mirror. We can't focus group our way to this assertion. At some point, we say to people here I made
this. If you're not comfortable saying “here,
I made this,” you should probably do something else. “Here, I made this” is the joy of what
we get to do. It doesn't have to be “I sat by myself in
a room and typed something.” It could be “My team of 40 people just opened
this restaurant. I was part of the team, I'd love for you to
try it.” We made this. That's all the same thing. What we didn't do is ask ten thousand people
what they wanted, average up all their answers, here it is. Because then that's average, which is another
word for mediocre. Absolutely. Boring. Forgettable. Vanilla, and not the good way. I love vanilla. You talk about a difficult yet valuable exercise
for marketers that can stretch our empathy muscles. I thought this was genius. For the people that don't choose you, why
are they right? Why are the people who don't choose you correct
in their decision not to choose you? Inside The Marketing Seminar, this is the
knots people tie themselves into. What they want to say is you're right because
you're an idiot. Or you're right because you have bad taste. You have no taste. You don't even know what's good. Here's the deal, empathy means I don't know
what you know, I don't want what you want, I don't need what you need, and that's okay. The person who doesn't like what you sell
is right because they don't know what you know, they don't want what you want, they
don't need what you need. Et cetera, et cetera. The question as a marketer is to say if I
could inform them of something, would they change their mind? For a lot of people the answer is still no. Fine. Shun the non-believers. It's not for you. I get that. That's what makes culture work. If you're gonna spend all your time hoping
that the white table cloth remains white without one spot of red wine on it, you're gonna be
a very unhappy person. Because there are no pure white table cloths
left. You state price is a story and that cheap
is another way to stay scared. A low price is the last refuge for a marketer
who has run out of generous ideas. That gets an amen from me. If you are hoping to win on sort by price,
you're doomed because the internet loves sort by price and someone’s always gonna be cheaper
than you. It's a race to the bottom. Even if you do win for a little while, you're
always gonna be afraid because someone can get even cheaper than you. Low price is the refuge for the marketer who
has nothing to offer, except it's cheaper. If that's all you have to say, then you better
be the cheapest. For all the rest of us, we have to say this
costs more and it's worth it. If you're not comfortable with that, then
you don't believe it's worth it. That's the challenge is to figure out how
to bring the story of price to the table because the fact is, no one drives a Yugo, no one
gets their hair cut with a Flowbee anymore. Because the fact is, those were cheaper but
we liked paying more. Yeah. Because paying more told ourselves a story
about who we were and where we are going. Paying more gives us a sense of reassurance,
paying more makes us the customer, which means we get to dictate quality going forward. The gutsy thing to do is to be able to say
to your customer, "This costs a lot and it's worth even more than that." Yes. That's where we have to head. That has always made me excited, like in my
business I joke around with anyone that'll listen to me, but I'm like, "Look, I'm expensive
but worth it dot com. I will do my best to put out the best free
advice and information that we possibly can and we work our tails off for that consistently
now, and if you're going to engage in a training program with me, it's going to be an investment,
and it will be 20, 30, 40 times more than what you've invested." Right. It feels really good as a business owner. You know, it's been like 18 years now and
I love that positioning because also, you wrote about this in the book, you can pay
people- Right. A fair wage, you have margins so that you
can invest in quality, you can do other things with those resources to help shift the culture,
whatever culture you're aimed towards. For anyone listening right now, and I know
we have a lot of folks in our audience who feel this way, they may be getting started
on their entrepreneurial journey and they want to serve a particular market that perhaps
doesn't have deep pockets. What do you say to them? Well, I got to do a couple little bits back. Yeah, of course. First of all, entrepreneurs and freelancers
are not the same thing. Freelancers get paid when we work, you're
freelancing right now, so am I. We didn't send somebody else to the room. Entrepreneurs build something bigger than
themselves, entrepreneurs make money when they sleep, entrepreneurs build a business
they can sell. Most people who are starting out as entrepreneurs
are actually freelancers. If you want to make it as a freelancer, the
only thing to do is not work more hours, 'cause that hits a limit really fast, it's get better
clients because better clients challenge you more, pay you more, talk about your work more,
and the work you make spreads more so you get better clients still. The only difference between a great freelancer
and a struggling freelancer is who has better clients. We need to spend our time doing that. But if you're an entrepreneur and you say,
"I am seeking to serve people who don't have deep pockets," you just picked your smallest
viable audience. Don't whine about the fact that they don't
have deep pockets, you picked them. If that's their nature, then you're going
to need more of them in order to deliver what you deliver. Walmart said, "Look, there are people in Arkansas
who don't want to spend $600 for a lawnmower. We're going to serve them, but in order for
that to work, we need there to be a lot of lawnmowers we're going to sell." That's got to be built into the business. You can't say, "I want to build a bespoke
business that's truly authentic to my inner nature, and I'm going to spend all this money
and I'm going to be critic proof, and it's $1." 'Cause you can't have both, unless you figure
out how to get to scale. Yeah. My advice for most people who are starting
out is, if you have a choice between picking a well-off audience and a not well-off audience,
pick a well-off audience. Pick one... It's not how much they have in their bank,
it's how much are they willing to spend to solve this problem because people without
a big balance will still spend a lot to solve a particular problem if you're worth it, right? And if it's important to them. And it also too, I think, it's worth noting,
and you talked about this in the book, like think about how free ideas spread. If you have a particular idea that you want
to get out into the world, you have all of these free tools, exactly what we're doing
right now. Right. And it's been the model for me frankly, I
love sharing ideas. I love having genius people on the show that
we can say, "Hey, think about this. This could help you really make a change in
your business or your life," knowing that there's tens of thousands, millions of people
that have seen shows like this, they will never buy anything from me. That makes me happy. Yep. Because if I can make the impact out there
for folks that are never going to come to an event or sign up for a training program,
so I don't want to discount that either because it's like we're living in this miraculous
time. Oh, yeah. There's two ends to this curve. There's relatively expensive and there's free,
as in free beer and free love and free, free, free. Yeah. Free is this magical thing that the internet
has supercharged because what free earns you is trust and attention. Trust and attention are the two building blocks
of the modern economy, not a factory because no one owns a factory anymore. You can outsource the factory part, but you
can't bring change to the world unless you have attention, 'cause no one knows you're
there, and trust, so that people give you the benefit of the doubt. Where do trust and attention come from? They come from experience. Where does the experience come from? Free samples. The idea that we can put effort into a concept,
a video, an audiobook, a podcast, and have it reach lots of people, even if all we want
to do is make money, that is a really great path. But the other part that's super cool is let's
say it's not your day job, all you want to do is make things better, that's another unbelievable
opening, is that you can put something into the world that makes things better and it
doesn't cost you anything every time it makes someone better. If you own a factory and everyone comes for
a free sample, you go out of business. But if you make ideas and everyone comes for
a free sample, you do great. It's very true. So, I want to have you, if it's okay, read
the last little section in here that I've noted because I feel like it's the perfect
way to wrap up this conversation. Like I said, guys, I cannot recommend this
book enough. Y'all, if you know me any amount of time you
know how much I love marketing, and this book is filled with marketing timeless genius. You are so kind. It's right there. It's the truth. I don't blow smoke. You know me. “There's a difference between being good
at what you do, being good at making a thing, and being good at marketing. We need your craft, without a doubt, but we
need your change even more. It's a leap to choose to make change. It feels risky, fraught with responsibility,
and it might not work. “If you bring your best self to the world,
your best work, and the world doesn't receive it, it's entirely possible that your marketing
sucked. It's entirely possible that you have empathy
for what people are feeling. It's entirely possible that you chose the
wrong axes and that you failed to go to the edges. It's entirely possible you were telling the
wrong story to the wrong person in the wrong way on the right day, or even on the wrong
day. Fine. But that's not about you. That's about your work as a marketer, and
you can get better at that craft. Brilliant. Thanks. Brilliant. Anything else you'd like to leave us with? Oh, could we talk for two more hours? Yeah, of course we can. I learn so much when I'm with you. The passion and connectedness that you bring
to this audience, we're all so lucky that you are in the forefront of making these changes
for people. Then, I'm proud to be a marketer, you're proud
to be a marketer, we're upping the game here for lots of people. So, thank you. Thank you. Now, Seth and I would love to hear from you. We talked about so many good things, but I'm
curious, what's the one insight that you're taking away, and, most important, how can
you put that insight into action starting right now? As always, the best conversations happen over
at the magical land of MarieForleo.com, so head on over there and leave a comment now. While you're there, be sure to subscribe to
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and little updates from me that I just don't share anywhere else. Stay on your game and keep going for your
dreams because the world really does need that special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for watching, and I'll catch
you next time on MarieTV. B-School is coming up, want in? For more info and free training, go to joinbschool.com. Something fascinating always happens when
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