Espresso: Seth Godin - Never Forget These 3 Core Human Motivations in Strategy

0:05It's very easy as a food entrepreneur to think that there is a deliciousness shortage. There is not. I would like to encourage you to make something delicious. Thank you very much. But there is not a deliciousness shortage. That is not why people are going to buy from you. They're going to buy from you because of the two things that are never changing about humans. A need for status. A need for affiliation. And the third one, a bonus, freedom from the feeling of fear. Those are the three things that motivate people. Status means I get to eat lunch first. I'm a fancy person. I'm an insider. I've earned this.

0:45Affiliation is the people to my left and the people to my right are doing this. I don't want to be left out. And the freedom from the story of fear is I don't want to die. Those three things over and over and over and over and over again. And so if you decide to show up as a food entrepreneur, you better have a story bigger than this is delicious. because I can't name a food entrepreneur who has succeeded solely because it's delicious. And the last thing about Heinz Ketchup, Malcolm Gladwell has pointed out, Heinz Ketchup is in more refrigerators in the United States than any other food, except for Kraft Singles cheese, which isn't really cheese.

1:29And the reason no one buys any other brand is simple. When you are three years old, Heinz ketchup is the very first food your mother lets you dispense yourself. And so to buy any other brand of ketchup is to denigrate your mom. It is a celebration of your childhood to embrace Heinz ketchup. That is what they make money from, not the fact that it's delicious. What would you say the role of marketing is on human nature if you were to try and explain it to an alien? Marketing is people like us do things like this. That's all it is. It is a cultural signal to people who want affiliation and status to say, this is what we do.

2:16So if you're looking at all the issues in National Geographic and you see people from somewhere else wearing weird clothes, they're only weird to you. They're not weird to them. They grew up wearing those clothes because that's what the marketing told them to wear. Maybe not the store marketing, but it's still marketing, right? So if someone from 40 years ago saw us with this conversation with you little with invisible white things in your ear and me doing this thing, wearing these clothes, what are we doing here? All of it was invented by marketing. This is normal now. So the goal, if you want scale, is to make what you're trying to shift from new to normal.

2:55Some people want to go when it's new. Some people want to go when it's normal, but this is how we get in sync as a species. The way ants get in sync is they release pheromones and the smells tell them what to do. Well, this is our version of that. Thank you so much for listening to that espresso. I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day. Let's be having your boy. And please do subscribe, follow the podcast, share this espresso on WhatsApp if you liked it. And also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description. I spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy.

3:32It's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink. You're not going to get these in a business book, so please subscribe and thank me later. Two months free. Yeah, that's what Espresso sponsors Unleashed are offering. They are supply chain gurus and offer inventory management that talks to your e-com and accounting software. It's helped Ireland's cut admin time in half, get granular clarity on your margins, know where your stock is, don't miss availability. Brands like Candy Kittens, Tarquin's Gin, Minor Figures and Trip all use Unleashed. And I reckon you should too. As I said, two months free in the show notes.

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