Seth Godin on Breaking the Cycle of Competition by Winning Your Own Game

0:00Thanks for pressing play. If you love this serendipitous magic that can only occur in a real conversation, you're in the right place. This is Christopher Lochhead, Follow Your Different, the number one real dialogue oddcast for business leaders, entrepreneurs, and category designers with a different mind. Today's guest is the legendary Seth Godin, a best-selling author, marketing innovator, and thought leader who has reshaped our thinking about business and personal development. Seth is the mastermind behind groundbreaking ideas like permission marketing and the purple cow. He tirelessly advocates for meaningful and ethical marketing in a noisy world.

0:36His influence extends far beyond marketing. Seth challenges entrepreneurs and creators to think deeply about their purpose, strategy, and the impact they seek to make. Seth joins Chris to share his insights on the future of AI, the power of personal agency, and the dangers of the hustle porn culture. In this conversation, we dive into Seth's philosophy on designing a life and career with intention rather than following the crowd. He discusses why choosing your customers means choosing your future and explains how to avoid the competition traps that lead so many entrepreneurs astray. Seth also reflects on the role of AI in modern business, the importance of emotional labor, and how the best companies leverage AI not just as a tool but as a core part of their business strategy.

1:22This episode is packed with wisdom from a true trailblazer in the world of business and marketing. You won't want to miss it. Applications for the Category Design Academy's November 2024 cohort are now open, but you better hurry before the ship sails without you. This is the ultimate category design learning experience taught by the masters of category design themselves. Learn how to build a thriving niche business without spending decades climbing the corporate ladder or taking on debt for an MBA. Learn more and apply at categorypirates.com slash academy. Now, as Joey Ramone said, hey-ho, let's go.

2:15Well, Seth, it certainly is wonderful to see you. How have you been? I've been well.

2:19Seth Godin: How are you, sir? I am doing great, but getting better. It's been such a lucky ride and I'm really lucky to be here. You have had an amazing ride and I'm a long-time listener and first-time caller.

2:34And certainly want to compliment you on your intellect, your success as an entrepreneur, obviously your success as a writer and podcaster and thinker, your wonderful glasses, but most importantly, I think you have the sexiest hairdo a man can have. Well, I'm not going to comment on our sartorial choices, but I will tell you a huge part of my success is having the privilege to show up.

3:01Seth Godin: That people don't keep track of how many times I failed, and I try to be generous and consistent, but showing up is really the secret. I also think, you know, I remember reading Permission Marketing, and I want to talk to you about it. I thought it was an amazing book when it came out. I still think it's an incredible insight, one that should be paid more attention to, but we can get to that. But ever since that book came out, that was sort of the first time you came on my radar, and you've been a very high-profile marketer and thinker, particularly in tech, but elsewhere since. And unlike a lot of people who do that kind of thing, you didn't turn yourself into an asshole or a Gary VD hustle porn star.

3:48you're not i'm sure you've been on these podcasts where you're sitting before the podcast and you have a normal conversation like this and then record happens and then the douchebag host goes you're like what the fuck is going on here and so i don't know that i've always agreed with everything you've ever said or written but what i do agree with is it's very clear seth you are somebody who is legitimately trying to make a difference for for marketers for entrepreneurs and for people overall. And so I'm curious, how have you held on to a true north in a world where we're living in a cesspool of hustle porn stars?

4:28Seth Godin: Well, first, thank you. I'm not sure I agree with everything I've ever said. And what mystifies me is the people who are sitting right next to me who won the lottery, who have an asset and a chance to create. I don't understand why they became the way they became. Some of these people were my friends. If you decide that your life's work is to be more famous and that the cost of that is to be more controversial and the cost of that is more conflict, I think your original decision is a problem. I decided for my peace of mind and my self-esteem 20, 15 years ago, not to try to get any new readers, any new followers.

5:19Seth Godin: If someone bumps into my work because someone they care about told them about it, that's great. But I'm not going to chase the flavor of the day because I work very hard, not as hard as some people, but very hard to have the ability to choose the impact I want to make on the world. I don't want to give it up just to do the flavor of the day. And I've talked to people who have been seduced by this siren and they can't explain it. They're just stuck, stuck in the cycle of constantly being on the hamster wheel. Freedom, I think, is partly the ability to do work you're proud of. Amen. Hallelujah, brother.

6:01And it's interesting. I told some folks I know that you and I were going to be speaking. And a couple of them said something I found surprising. They said, well, why would you have Seth on your podcast? Isn't he a competitor?

6:16I said, what the hell are you talking about? He said, well, you know, he's a marketing guru, you're a marketing, blah, blah, blah. And I said, well, first of all, I'm nowhere near in Seth's league nor trying to be. But more importantly, I view everybody who's trying to make a difference as a collaborator, as a friend, as a partner. I think your work is outstanding. I think that you have shoulders that I and my colleagues are trying to stand on, as well as many others who've inspired and educated us over the years. And anybody who's doing legendary things for entrepreneurs, marketers, and human beings overall is a friend mine.

6:54And so I find that competition mindset a very strange one. Yes. That somehow your success would somehow be upsetting to me.

7:04Seth Godin: I mean, it's just, I know so many people who have that mindset, but let's think about this. Books don't sell very well in the grocery store. They sell in the bookstore right next to all the other books. And authors blurb each other's books because they understand the competition isn't the books. It's Netflix. The competition is Twitter. The competition is I don't read, not this other author. And some of my most inspiring and best ideas come from people who an outsider might say are my competition. We get better when we are together. And so this zero-sum game mindset, I mean, going all the way back, I remember early in my career, I called it Microsoft because I had an idea.

7:52Seth Godin: And the receptionist was not allowed to tell me the name of anyone who worked there or anyone who was in the right department. And I'm like, how does keeping that a secret help your goals? I don't understand. Well, and you talk about it in your new book. When I went through the overview of the new book, I thought, wow, either I've been snooping on Seth's meetings or he's been snooping on ours. There's so much in it that's so fucking legendary, Seth. One of the things you touch on that is just a huge theme for us is abundance. And you wrote this line that just stopped me in my tracks. You said, choose your customers, choose your future, choose your competition, lose your future.

8:43And it has been our experience that entrepreneurs, creators of any kind who focus on creating that new, aka abundance, versus competing on the old, live much more happy lives and generally are much more financially successful. So I've been waiting for weeks now to ask you, why did you write, choose your customers, choose your future, choose your competition, lose your future?

9:10Seth Godin: The way you said it is mellifluous and profound, but I'm not sure that's what I wrote. There are three riffs in the book. Excellent. I would just love to accept all these nice words, but people will fact check it and then they'll discover I'm making it up. What does it mean first? Choose your customers, choose your future. If you decide to be a certain kind of rock star who has an audience that only wants you to play greatest hits. Please accept the fact that for the rest of your career, you're going to be playing greatest hits. You pick your customers and they will determine where you're going to go.

9:48Seth Godin: That when Miles Davis, after he became super famous, started playing with his back to the audience. And this was a way of saying to the audience, I'm not here for you. I'm here for the music. And if this isn't for you, right? And Bob Dylan, after he went electric in his made-up autobiography said that he would go to the same city three times in three years, which you're not supposed to do as a touring artist. He said, the first time, the fans of my old stuff will come and they'll be disappointed. The second time, people will come hoping I'll play the old stuff and be disappointed. By the third time, my people will be there.

10:24Seth Godin: Pick your customers, pick your future. Then the next part of it is, pick your distribution, pick your future. So if you decide that you want to accomplish your goals on TikTok, the way you do it is going to be determined by the fact that the medium you're distributing on is going to force you to be a certain way. So I'm frequently hearing people whining about how their distribution is forcing them to race to the bottom, forcing them to make something they don't want to make. I'm like, well, you picked that distribution method. You didn't have to. And the third one is when you pick the people you are validating with or competing against, you're also picking your future.

11:05Seth Godin: Because if all your competition for market share that you said was important to you are racing in one direction, there will be pressure on you to outdo them. And so back to your first question, if I decided that my competition were super famous podcasters who say ridiculous things because they're just, quote, kidding. I could only compete with them by outdoing that. So I've announced to myself, they're not my competition. I forgive them. They can do their thing. I'm not going to listen, but their listeners aren't my listeners. Their message isn't my message. And that's okay because I want to claim my future, not say, well, I had no choice.

11:45Seth Godin: Everyone else is doing it. legendary. So maybe Seth, let's pop the hood on what you, what you mean by claim your future. And specifically, I've been amazed about this my whole life. This is a radical oversimplification, but it seems like there are people for whom they sort of get up every day and deal with the day. And ultimately today turns into tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow with a sort of, well, what's the weather going to be like today? Oh, it's going to be a little chilly. Maybe I need a sweater. Oh, maybe I should bring an umbrella. Oh, it's going to be sunny, et cetera, et cetera. And they sort of, if you will, respond to the day.

12:25And I don't have any scientific evidence, but that seems to be a lot of people and the degree to which they have dreams and plans and strategies. They tend to live more in the dream era than in any other area. And then there are Other people, you know, have dear friends who moved here three or four years ago, and they decided they wanted to move to California, and they wanted to be near my wife and I, and they moved from Boston. And they created and executed a 10-year plan. And they live here, and they're having a wonderful life. and the life they are living right now, Seth, is 100 % by design, and it was designed many years ago and executed about as flawlessly as, if you will, a life design could be executed.

13:13And yet most people don't consider this, never mind actually get busy doing it. Yeah.

13:20Seth Godin: No, I mean, you've tapped into something essential, and that's what I'm trying to write about in this strategy, which is we've been indoctrinated from the time we were four years old to fit in, do what we're told, get the right answer, get an A, move forward. For 16 years of school, they never asked you a question that they didn't know the answer to. Think about that. So you've had all of these decades of training of conforming, of fitting in. And what they offer you in return is you don't have to be responsible. You get to say, I'm just doing my job. So the bargain, which was invented by Andrew Carnegie and other industrialists is simple.

14:02Seth Godin: Give up agency over your future and I will give you small prizes and the weekend off. And the solace that comes with that, the solace of Netflix and the solace of not my fault is seductive. What it is to have a strategy is to say, I desire to make a change in the world. I have a way to describe a future that I would like to live in. I can see the systems around me. I can array assets and put them to work with systems to get to where I seek to go. But when we say all those things, we're responsible. If we don't reach it, it's on us. If we do reach it, it's on us. That's hard if you've been brainwashed your whole life not to do that.

14:46Seth Godin: So mostly what I do in my work is not say anything that is fundamentally original or profound, but I have the guts to shine a light and say, you can have this if you are willing to do this kind of emotional labor. And so why do we live in a world where it is not commonly well understood that you can a design your life any way you want i mean you and i live in the united states of america the vast majority of us who live in the western world have an opportunity unlike anyone else i mean it's it's it's i believe around 10 of the planet that lives in what the economist calls a quote-unquote true democracy and so those of us who live in places where we're not constrained by horrible things, nothing's stopping us, particularly here in the United States.

15:44And yet it's just the idea, right? I grew up very, let's call it modest, single mother, the whole thing, you know, paper route at 10, all of that stuff. And in my world growing up, the thinking was, you know, Christopher, for the best thing you could have is a good government job. Right? Because then you had a guaranteed paycheck and a guaranteed pension, and you put in your 40 years or 35, whatever it was, and to your point, you know, you get a Scooby snack at the end and probably not even a Rolex. And that's that. And that was the mindset because it was a safety, security mindset. And just the idea that you could say, no, I'm not doing any of that.

16:26I'm not fitting in. I'm not conforming. I'm not subjugating myself. I'm going to practice radical agency is an incredible act of defiance.

16:37Seth Godin: Yeah. Well, it doesn't just have to be the Western world and it doesn't just have to be humans. So we'll start with Lucy, the shelter dog we had for 12 years. We got Lucy an invisible fence and the way an invisible fence works is there's a boundary, dog gets near a boundary, it makes a beeping sound. If the dog keeps going, he gets a small shock. I'm confident Lucy was only shocked once in Lucy's entire life. And after three months, the battery died and I never replaced it because I didn't need to, right? That the fence was now in Lucy's head. It wasn't anywhere but there. So we have the fence in our head.

17:21Seth Godin: And I do not believe I am living a life of radical agency. I believe I am fitting in almost all the way, except for a little bit. A life of radical agency would involve a lot more relationship trauma and shifts in what we do and where we do it. But all people like you and I are saying to folks is, you have 10 % in the gas tank to lean into something, and you're choosing not to. You're saving it, keeping your head down, because you've been brainwashed by the TV industrial complex to believe that success and stability are the same thing. And technology has shifted the opportunities dramatically.

18:08Seth Godin: Everyone listening to this has more resources than the last king of France did. And the last king of France didn't have very much agency other than declaring war on England or not. But in general, the number of options were small. Now we have countless options. What are we going to absorb? What are we going to engage with? Where are we going to go? How are we going to do it? And it's so much easier to just fit in. And my message to people is, if that's working for you, I'm not going to try to talk you out of it. But if it's not working for you, if you are frustrated, if you are dissatisfied, maybe you need a different strategy.

18:46And the way you get a different strategy is by talking about it, by finding two or three peers and telling them.

18:53Seth Godin: So your friends who moved to California, I have a feeling they didn't just do it without telling anybody what they were up to. That you're playtesting it, you're stress testing it. When you say it out loud, even if no one says anything back, just the act of saying it out loud crystallizes our thinking, exposes our logic, makes us aware that we're hoping for a miracle at a step that a miracle might not be required, and we can do something about it. This is easier to do today than ever before, but it's missing because it's easier to just do what we're told. With the emergence of AI, we have a budding theory, Seth, that sort of says, if you take a step back, Peter Drucker invented the term knowledge worker as a very eloquent way of distinguishing those of us who work with our muscles from those of us who work with our mind.

19:51And if you look at the definition of knowledge worker, it essentially says somebody who acquires knowledge and gets paid to apply that knowledge. And the more value the application of that knowledge, the more valuable that person. As a result of AI, the acquisition and application of knowledge decreases in value pretty much every day. and so our argument is that people who can not just apply existing knowledge but create net new knowledge become um the highest rung on the value ladder of of the working world if you will and so a what do you think about that and b i want to use that as a leap off point

20:40Seth Godin: i'm mostly with you i think the semantics are important here the internet made it significantly easier to acquire data and human beings needed to turn it into information and information applied with experience becomes knowledge the next step up the ladder is ai is turning data into information before it gives it to us but there's still the step after that and that is the step that says responsibility emotional labor decision-making agency, that is what we are actually paying people for. So when the steam shovel showed up, the people who digged ditches were in big trouble. And most of them figured out how to find new jobs where they used the steam shovel, new jobs where they could use the tools.

21:33Seth Godin: That longshoremen used to use those big hooks, and now they use cranes and containers. But in some countries, there are computers that have figured out many of that thing, and they just have to figure out how to apply. So the status quo mindset is how do I stop this in its tracks so I can go back to sleep? And the opportunity mindset is to say, I don't want to work for AI. I want AI to work for me. And today that means prompt engineering. Six months from now, that will mean agent engineering. And six months after that, it will mean getting agents to become agents who work for me. Do you think the average person in the work world today is ready for this?

22:19No.

22:20Seth Godin: I'm stunned at how many of my smart friends don't spend 45 minutes a day touching this magical thing that if you'd written a science fiction novel about it 20 years ago, no one would have believed you. That this is a miracle. It's the biggest change in our world since electricity, it will have huge downsides, but you better know how it works. And it's so much easier to say, well, yeah, but I'm a lawyer. I got a trial tomorrow. And that will keep being true until it's not true. It's interesting you say this, Seth, because I've been amazed since particularly the launch of ChatGPT and everything that's come since, the number of really smart people with extraordinary educations who are in incredible leadership positions in my world who have barely touched the stuff and sort of have this high level theoretical concept of it.

23:14But for example, in the last, I don't know, maybe six months or so, my behavior has switched from almost always going to Google first to almost always going to perplexity first. And I bring up perplexity in my friend group and they've never fucking heard of it. And, and I live, you know, across the hill from Silicon Valley, I've spent the better part of 30 years in the tech ecosystem. And I'll ask VCs, well, you know, how are you using perplexity or ChatGPT or Baird, Gemini, et cetera, et cetera, in your work? And they're like, well, you know, we use it for a little content marketing yeah like are you out of your mind and for me as a writer particularly as a dyslexic writer who loves data and research holy shit i have the 50 greatest research assistants at my disposal at any moment in time i've like won the kind of how to create awesome substantive shit or figure out how i'm full of shit instantly quickly i mean it's I'm in it all day, every day.

24:22And so I'm amazed that people aren't in it. What is going on here?

24:26Seth Godin: Well, part of what's going on is generational. And part of what's going on for you is geographic. You know, I used to travel the world organizing my own talks where I would rent a cool theater and sell tickets and people would come. And the two years that I did it, San Francisco and Silicon Valley had the lowest per capita response rate of any place that I would go. And I'll talk to somebody from the Valley and I'll mention Jeff Moore and they'll say, who? And I'll talk about, you know, if you're not talking about the latest Twitter buzz thing, they have no interest whatsoever because they have been super lucky turning a bunch of money into a bunch more money and not being intentional about the thinking behind it.

25:13Seth Godin: I used to work at Yahoo. I saw it every single day among the 10 people who were running Yahoo at the time, that they couldn't articulate beyond a simple buzz statement what their job was and the change they sought to make. All they knew is the stock price is going up two or three bucks. And if you have a billion dollars in the bank, people think you're smart. I think that there is a different generation that I spend a lot of time with and other parts of the world where they're going gangbusters because they're saying, we got left out of the geography lottery and we're not the dominant boomer thing.

25:49Seth Godin: So what the hell? No one's offering us prizes in their world. We're going to go put this to work for us. And so we're going to see billion dollar companies with five employees, and we're going to see all sorts of really nasty, organized crime, spammy scams run by agents any minute now. All that's going to come from outside Sand Hill Road. No doubt. A cocktail party conversation that I find myself in from time to time of late is, when, Seth, will we have the first$1 billion valuation, one-person startup? Yeah, I think it's pretty close. The network effect - You think it's within 12 to 24 months?

26:33Oh, yeah.

26:34Seth Godin: The network effect is not played out yet. The network effect is the most powerful force in our economy since 1980 or 90. And when you add that to a tireless language-based workforce that works for free, really interesting things are going to happen. If I was a couple of decades younger and wanted to start a new thing, I could think of a dozen ways that you could start a billion dollar startup using AI and the network effect. The other thing I think that many people miss, particularly outside of Silicon Valley, but again, surprisingly, even in Silicon Valley, is that AI startups use AI to build the startup.

27:20So they're not just building an AI carbon negulator product. They're also using all these other AI things, some of which they create, some of which they buy, to build out the business. And so in our little world, you know, we're seeing three people startups with$150 ,000 in a year produce a result that would have taken 25 people and$5 million only a few years ago. I mean, it is mind boggling. You know, I'm working with a 25 year old female entrepreneur right now. And what she's been able to achieve with a small group of people and a small amount of angel investment is truly stunning. One of the top VCs in history is in this deal with me and his eyeballs are coming out of his head.

28:06And so I think this is something that most people don't understand, which is people are using the AI to do all the stuff inside the company. Yeah.

28:15Seth Godin: And the other thing that's distracting is there's a difference between the tools you use and the business you create. So Amazon isn't an email company or a website. Retail Amazon is a warehouse, a UPS truck, and a database. And so he took really ordinary commonplace items and wove them together in a moment of time when there was a vacuum to do so. So we're going to see AI become parts of all of these companies, but they're not going to be AI companies. They're going to be companies that deliver something to people that they've always wanted or needed. Well, it's interesting. I forget his name now.

29:02The founder of Perplexity was on Lex Friedman a little bit ago. And I'm always listening for lots of things, but one of the things I'm always listening for is, is there something small that made a giant difference that was radically different that somehow tipped the game? And one of the things that he mentioned, and when he said it, it cloned me in the middle of the head. If you've used the product,

29:28Seth Godin: you ask it every day. Yeah. So, you know, you ask it a question and then underneath whatever it gives you, it gives you three to five more questions. Well, it turns out that they discovered most people don't know because they're used to search, not prompt. They're used to looking, not getting an answer. They're used to finding a list, not an outcome. They don't know what the next prompt, the next question should or could be to kind of drill into the topic or whatever it is they're trying to achieve. And so this minuscule little insight call, we're going to put three or five questions after that question, they believe is a big thing that made the company.

30:13Yeah. Yeah.

30:16Seth Godin: So let's talk about search for just a second, because I think it helps people understand when we're talking about strategy, how the world changes. So I was at Yahoo in 99. I was not in the room, I'm glad to say, when they had the chance to buy Google for 10 million dollars. Not 10 billion, not 10 trillion,$10 million. And they said no. And it was dumb, but it was coherent because Yahoo's strategy at the time was the web is nascent. We want people to come to Yahoo and stay at Yahoo. If we can figure out how to get 40 clicks, that's how we make money. And Google's strategy was we want people to leave Google.

30:55Seth Godin: Google only had two buttons at the beginning. This is Marissa's contribution. And the other one was, I'm feeling lucky. That was a button of confidence. That was a button that said, we want you to leave Google right away and we're going to make it super easy for you. Just press this button and you're out of here. And so Yahoo said, let's save the$10 million and put it into Yahoo Kids instead. That was their strategy. And it was wrong because technology was the change agent that changed the ecosystem. So then Google ran with their strategy, come here to leave for a dozen years or so, and then they shifted to something else.

31:29Seth Godin: And what perplexity is figuring out is if we can teach people to dance with the brains of our operation, every other website will seem inferior and this will be worth paying for. And as a user, I think they're right. The other thing is a side note, but knowing a little bit about you when when gpt and gemini and all the others started coming i'm a news junkie and i was beyond irritated radically pissed off that when i said to gpt or or even more so to gemini given it's a google product tell me what happened in israel gaza yesterday, it goes, oh, I'm not talking about anything scary. Right. And it won't fucking do that.

32:20Or if there was a horrible school shooting or the latest polls in the election or whatever it is, they don't want to have anything to do with it because maybe it'll be toxic. And what perplexity did was what I was dreaming of, which is ability to have a conversation in real time about an event that's happening. And given the size and scope of the pipe they're sucking from, you can learn things about whatever it is, if it's a real-time event, in an incredibly powerful way. And so now when news breaks, I'm on Twitter, now X, and perplexity, because CNN or the New York Times or any, I mean, they don't have any fucking idea what's going on.

33:03If an explosion just happened in Beirut, you can see it right now on X, and perplexity will find news stories about it in a way that the others won't. And so there's this amazing ability to have a real-time interaction with critical events going on that I just love.

33:22Seth Godin: I guess you and I have a different, there was a, Michael Crichton wrote one of his books that didn't become a movie called, maybe it did, actually it did, Terminal Man. And the idea of Terminal Man was it was a politician who figured out how to plug into the equivalent of Twitter of 1980. And eventually he goes insane. The problem with breaking news is it's not really breaking and it's not often news. It's just a business model. And so you sound like you're using it, but many times it is using people. And when it becomes part of your business model, it ends up being a source of distraught, depression, division.

34:05Seth Godin: And I wish that people who say they care about this in the media had decided to make a stand about how they were going to turn the dials. Because when a trusted news source needs to make their numbers go up and they decide to hype everything up, they're not making anything better. Many people in the world say the world is on the edge of disaster. It's the worst it's ever been. By every measure, except for climate, it's the best it's ever been. But if you're going to trust the incoming noise, it doesn't feel that way. Clearly we get distorted. And I think we're at a point where most people with an IQ larger than their shoe size understand there's radical bias in the news that we consume.

34:50And the more mainstream news it is, the more radically biased it is. and I don't know that we can quote unquote trust anybody but to me the only people who I really trust today are independents in the news business because most of the independents at least the ones that I follow are radically clear about what their biases are and and and kind of present their work in that context and so you know what you're dealing with generally it's the hidden agendas, I think, that drive a lot of us nuts. My point, though, with perplexity is the ability to triangulate and synthesize, right? So did a bomb go off in Lebanon today and did it kill anybody?

35:33Those are just facts. You know, the minute you read, well, it was a result of the Israeli occupation. Okay, well, the minute you say occupation, you're now editorializing. It may be an occupation, it may not. We can have an argument about that. But the minute you have any kind of a descriptor. There's some bias coming through regardless, even if you're trying not to. And so what I love about the ability to get real-time information is it's being triangulated. You see where it's coming from, and hopefully you can at least get to some version of, okay, I don't care what anybody fucking thinks. I just want to know what happened.

36:12So let's get to strategy. It's a topic that I've loved my entire life since I started my first company at 18. And here's my big question for you. Why is it when you ask 10 executives at most companies, hey, what's our strategy?

36:30Seth Godin: Correct. What comes out next is A, not consistent, and B, radically different and C, mostly not understandable. Correct. Ding, ding, ding. That's why I needed to write a book about it. They like to have a plan. The word, Roger Martin has pointed out, strategic plan is an oxymoron because a plan says if you manage to this and do these things, you will get the result and you need plans, but that's not strategy. Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. It is what is the core thing we are going to lean into? And if you keep your strategy a secret from your team, you're saying to your team, please do not innovate in any way because all I'm going to give you is tactics and steps.

37:16Seth Godin: And that's dangerous because the smartest people in your organization are not in the room with you. They're the ones who are facing the customer. If they can become clear about how to amplify the strategy, then the organization has resilience and can thrive. So Microsoft lost its way under Steve Ballmer because he didn't understand their strategy, and all he wanted to do was tactics. And so he missed five of the biggest innovations of the century in terms of tactics. You mean selling more windows in office is not a strategy, Seth? Well, it was a tactic in support of things that made sense five years ago.

38:00Seth Godin: Microsoft's strategy from the beginning has been, we want to be the IBM of software. So if you know what it means to be the IBM of hardware, which is no one ever got fired for buying this. We're not the first. We're not the cheapest. We're just the safest. you can repeat that over and over for a very long time. Nordstrom's strategy is, if we treat a certain kind of customer better than anybody else, they'll come back and pay extra. That's their strategy. As long as they kept doing that, they were doing fine. When they stopped doing it because those people had other places that could treat them better, they weren't doing so fine.

38:40Seth Godin: So what a good CEO does is not with a committee, but with just a couple of people, finds the guts to articulate what's the arc, the system that's going to help you go forward or the system you need to change. And if you can describe the forces in that system, and Moore's law is a great force in a system, that will be at your back. right so the last example i'll give you i met sergey shortly after google launched and we were at a small conference and he said google does no outbound promotion and no advertising he says here's the reason we're pretty confident that every day google is going to get better at doing search which means that soon everyone will use google but the longer it takes for them to use it for the first time, the better we're going to be.

39:33Seth Godin: So we're just going to patiently let Moore's law keep getting us better. And by the time anyone shows up, we'll be ready for them. It's interesting, their perspective, because they really believe they won because of the technology, don't they? And of course, it was a massive part of it, of course. It was a complete breakthrough. But what they don't understand, which is amazing to me, is the reason it worked was because it was radically different. Their perspective of how to organize the web and present it was radically different, as you know way better than I do, because you were there. And of course, they created a business model that solved the greatest problem in marketing, which is the old quote, 50 % of my budget is wasted.

40:23I just can't tell you where. and of course the minute we can do absolute attribution we solve that problem and so what they miss is the technology was a different category a different way of searching the web and providing the results and b and this is the one that really did it they solved the biggest problem in marketing that had never been solved which is i spend a dollar what do i get back And yet, they think it's because they built a better carbidinulator.

40:57Seth Godin: Well, I mean, and since we're talking marketing, it was one thing to get attributable direct marketing results. But the other thing that's even more powerful, I believe, Chanel's competitors could buy the Chanel keyword. So the first thing everyone does when everyone who has a reputation does when they get AI is they AI themselves. And the first thing people did when they got Google was they Googled themselves and they saw other people were buying their keyword for a nickel or dime. And they're like, this cannot stand. So they showed up to buy their own keyword for a nickel more. And then the auction was off.

41:36Seth Godin: So there were no salespeople involved at all. It was ego, status, affiliation. What do I tell my boss? Cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle, cycle. now in your book permission marketing i thought you delivered a radically non-obvious insight that was incredibly powerful and my memory of it and please correct me is that you did what legendary category designers do which is you reframed the current experience accurately and imbued it with negative attributes right so you said you described the marketing experience that we all have as interruption marketing. That is to say, I'm watching my TV show, I'm reading my magazine, I'm on my website, and a fucking thing stops my experience and says, hey man, a sale on hot tubs this weekend.

42:28And then I get back to it, and all of that we find completely irritating. That's interruption marketing, yes?

42:35Seth Godin: Yes. And permission marketing is, hey, I raise my hand and I say, you know what? your marketing is not bullshit to me i'm actually interested in it i'm i'm a super consumer of what you do i'm thinking about buying the kind of thing you make and i'm in that phase of research and education i i want to be on your newsletter i want to get your thing i etc etc and this concept of yours that what there is to do is find those people directly market to them what they're asking for. And in that sense, your marketing goes from being an interruption, which is a pain in the ass to something valuable for somebody who potentially is going to buy your product.

43:17Did I get it or what did I miss?

43:19Seth Godin: Very close. The two things you missed are there was a change agent, which is for the first time in human history, people could raise their hand, which you couldn't get them to do before because there was no way for them to raise their hand. And the second thing is the job of the marketer is to create the conditions for people to want to raise their hand. That part of the work we have to do is to earn permission. And then once you get permission, you don't have to spam people because you can deliver anticipated personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them. So your podcast delivering valuable information on the regular, you don't have to make a lot of noise to get people to hear the next episode.

44:03Seth Godin: because they subscribe to it. And not only can we subscribe to a podcast, we can emotionally subscribe to a brand of sweaters, right? It's the same mindset, which is, you are helping me become who I seek to become. Thank you for creating the conditions for that path to exist. Yes, of course, I want to hear what you have to say next. and it's a genius insight and at least my personal experience is interruption marketing has never been more prevalent today than ever okay so so many things today are more prevalent than ever. But the number of people who have decided to invest the patience and the care to earn this, the number of companies that are built on it, companies of giant scale, including Google's entire advertising model, is enormous.

45:04Seth Godin: And so, no, I didn't invent Google's advertising model, but I did invent ethical email marketing. And so MailChimp, et cetera, that's a$50 billion a year industry. It's real, but selfish short-term marketers driven by the stock market and competitive pressures keep trying to find a shortcut. It is possible to spam and hustle your way to short-term success, and then you go away. It's so fascinating, this term spam cannon. Just because you can fire a spam cannon doesn't make you a marketer. and uh my buddy lenny who's probably now the most um well-subscribed guy in the product startup growth world um you know he's he's on the verge of getting to a million subscribers of a sub stack and here's a guy who's a product manager a fairly introverted kind of guy incredibly thoughtful guy big-hearted guy who on a flyer decided to start a newsletter and maybe do some podcasts and see if he could make a go of it as a creator.

46:12And today, if the hottest startup in Silicon Valley tried to hire Lenny to be their head of product marketing or product management, they couldn't get him because here he sits on the verge of a million subscribers to what most people would call a really niche oriented thing. And the magic of it is he's got almost a million million fucking people who've raised their hand as a result of what you just described and said, hey, Lenny, I want to hear from you. Yeah.

46:48Seth Godin: Would they miss you if you were gone? I mean, I am so fortunate that a million people for years and years have been waiting for tomorrow morning from me, but they're not my people. I am their person. And that shift was very important for me to get through my head. I don't get to send these people anywhere. I don't get to sell these people anything. Sometimes they need me, are asking me to help them get to where they want to go. And as long as I continue to do that, I earn their permission. But the minute I think of them as mine is the minute they're going to leave. Well, and you did what I'm describing Lenny doing now at a very, very different time.

47:33So on one hand, there weren't very many people trying to do these kinds of things in the digital world, so you had that advantage. But of course, you had a radical disadvantage because there wasn't MailChimp, and there wasn't Mighty Networks or these other things for building communities, and WordPress was not where it is today and everything that has come since, and podcasting did not exist, end, end, end, end, end. And so building an audience online, there just wasn't ways to do it. And you cobbled all that shit together before any of it was even available.

48:11Seth Godin: It was not easy. I'll tell you one last story as we wrap up. I don't post a lot of pictures on my blog, but one of the things that when I used to travel really annoyed me was there should just be one standard for showers. this idea that shower designers think they should invent a new way for hot cold on off so i'm in this hotel somewhere in the world and the shower is one of the most extraordinarily bad designs i've ever seen so i take a picture of it and at 4 30 in the morning i post the picture and just before i'm about to go out or whatever like 20 minutes later i checked my email one last time this was back when things were held together with glue and and i get this email from someone She says, I just think you should know.

48:57Seth Godin: Take a really good look at the picture. And the mirror, if you just look, because I took a picture of it naked. And this could end your career, right? And fortunately, someone at TypePad was awake because I sent them this super urgent note because it was the only way to take the picture down. And they took it down before anybody else saw it. But that's how shaky it was. in the translation. Don't put pictures of your dick on the internet. If you can avoid it, Seth, is there anything else you'd like to touch on before we wrap? I'm just grateful for people like you who show up and do this and do this and do this.

49:40Seth Godin: It's tireless. You don't hear it often enough, but you're adding up to making a difference for people. So count me as a fan. Thanks, Seth. You're very welcome. And, uh, I've been a fan since the late nineties. Uh, love your work, love your intellect, love the way you do it. And, uh, you have the sexiest hairdo man can have. Keep making a ruckus. It was good to talk to you. Please come back soon. Thanks. Thanks. That was the legendary Seth Godin. To learn more about Seth, please see the show notes on your podcast player or head over to lockhead.com. Don't forget podcasts make great gifts. Share two podcasts you love with two people you love.

50:20And make sure you follow us today on your podcast player of choice. We'd like to thank you. We appreciate you investing part of your life with us. Are you ready to unlock the ultimate superpower in business category design? Enter the world of the Category Pirates. Discover how to create transformative futures and dominate markets with the premier newsletter crafted by and for pirates. Head to CategoryPirates.com and set your business on the path to greatness. But wait, there's more. Newsletter subscribers now get access to free audio mini books. And while you're there, explore all our books and new courses.

50:56It's the mother load of category design treasure. Join the Category Pirates today at categorypirates.com. Imagine your greatest salesperson could tell your story to every prospect and customer. Well, they can now with a new Autrenet website. Autrenet isn't just another website design firm. They are the beast in the category. For over 26 years, they've been the trusted partner for B2B and technology companies, defining, defending, and establishing categories that stand the test of time. Each Autrenet website is a handcrafted, bespoke masterpiece, capturing your unique brand and company culture in ways that set the standard in your industry.

51:37They don't just build websites, they forge lasting partnerships, measured in years, built on shared values and unwavering dedication. Need a website overhaul? Autrenet's rapid relaunch program will revitalize your site in just 12 weeks, transforming it into an ever-adapting, growing platform for your business. No more costly, intermittent projects, just continuous evolution, optimization, and elevation. Autrenet is not just a partner. They're an extension of your marketing team, delivering world-class designs, strategic insights, and lightning-fast updates. From Silicon Valley to the world, AtreNet has been the go-to agency for B2B website excellence since 1996.

52:19Ready to redefine your category? Visit AtreNet today. AtreNet, where your story becomes legendary. That's A-T-R-E dot net. Are you overwhelmed by endless tasks? Your time as a busy entrepreneur is precious. Reclaim your hours with a dedicated distant assistant from Bottleneck.online. No more late nights, just intelligent, efficient work. Get affordable, reliable support that's just a click away. Bottleneck's remote experts handle everything from admin tasks to in-depth analysis, delivering results with unmatched precision. Say goodbye to stress and hello to a new level of productivity. Unlock your potential and get the support you deserve.

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53:37So please, don't be lame. Get out of the passing lane. Everything is the way that it is because somebody changed the way that it was. Produced and edited by me, Jason DeFillippo. Sarah Knox and Jamie J handle the website and technical execution. Show notes by GM Simon. RJ and EX Bobas do our web development. Cedric Bieros does our graphic and web design. Our law firm is Weed and Jack. Our accountants are three balance sheets to the wind. We record on Squadcast.fm. Bob Dylan was right. Listen to Liam Clancy. Thanks Candy Dandy and Hate Collin, this oddcast really ties the room together. Our deepest apologies go out to Yaya Sinwar, leader of Hamas.

54:14Sorry, old boy. Looks like you just ran out of time. Till next time, stay safe, stay legendary, and follow your different.