526: In Retrospect - Seth Godin on Why You Shouldn't do What You're Told

0:01Hey founder fam, I want to talk to you about something super exciting. We're officially partnered with OmniSend, the email marketing and SMS platform built specifically for e-commerce founders. We've been recommending OmniSend to founder students for a while now because it just works. Whether you're launching your first store or you're scaling to seven figures, it really helps you automate your marketing and get real results. Did you know on average, OmniSend customers make$68 for every$1 they spend, which is an insanely good return on investment. And because you're part of the founder community, you get 50 % off your first three months with the code founder50.

0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey, founder fam, today we're excited to revisit our episode with marketing guru and bestselling author Seth Godin. This guy is one of my heroes and I never forget this episode where he shares why it's crucial to focus less on following orders and really focusing more on doing work that truly matters. He's known for his insightful tech talks. He's got tons of bestselling books like Linchpin, Purple Cow, so many have been game changers for me. He's got an influential daily blog and he really offers wisdom on shipping projects, the illusion of perfection, powerful marketing analogies, and really importance of daily blogging, daily content creation.

1:28I never forget this one. You guys are going to love it. So let's jump in. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan. Can you tell us about just quickly how you got your job? Well, I've worked extraordinarily hard not to have a job, and I haven't had a job since 1999, and before that, I hadn't had one since 86. And I think that focusing on doing the work instead of having a job is a key part of being an entrepreneur. And what triggered that change in 1996? Oh, it was 86. When I was 14, I started my first little company.

2:20And when I was 16, I had my first real company. And when I was in college, I co-founded the largest student-run business in the U.S. And each of those things was never about how do I make money doing something. It was how do I find enough resources to do a project that I'm interested in? how do I be able to put on a show that I care about? And if there's a business component to it, that's fine. But for me, the work has always been to do a project. And sometimes those projects can be amplified by working for someone. But even if you are working for someone, you don't have to act as if it's a job.

3:05A job is where you try to please someone who tells you what to do. And that person usually wants you to do what you did yesterday, but a little faster and a little cheaper. Whereas impresarios and people who make projects are playing by a completely different set of rules. So let's talk about stealing dreams and your concept of that. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Well, you know, the thing that enabled the world as we know it, including the fact that you and I are 10 ,000 miles apart and having a conversation for free, is industrialism. Industrialism is the idea that large organizations profit by getting bigger, by hiring efficient, productive workers who do what they are told.

3:54And the magic of industrialization, which has been around for 200 years or so, is that it enabled large, large numbers of people to go from being subsistence farmers to being in the middle class. And it's magical. But the challenge was there weren't enough factory workers. They couldn't find enough people who were willing to stand or sit in a dark factory for 10 or 12 hours a day and do what they were told. So we invented public school to train people to be obedient. I'm not making this up. That's actually its function. The first public school in the United States was in Massachusetts, and Horace Mann, the guy who started it, quickly ran out of teachers.

4:38So he needed to start a school to train women to be teachers. And do you know what he called this school? He called it the normal school, because the goal was to teach women, to teach kids to be normal. So school, the school you went to and the school I went to, is optimized to create obedient cogs in a productive factory setting. And that was really important for a really long time. But now, now that these platforms exist, now that individuals like you and I can do the work we care about without a job and without a boss, we shouldn't be teaching every single kid how to be normal, we should be teaching kids two things, how to solve interesting problems and how to lead.

5:24And if we have more of that, I think we're going to see our culture accelerate. So I wrote a manifesto about this called Stop Stealing Dreams. It's free on the internet.com. And I also did a TEDx talk about it for those who don't want to read it. Yeah, no, it was extremely captivating. And, you know, we've all had this thing planted in our mind that ever since you're little, you go to school, you get good grades and you get a job and you buy a house. And we're all used to that security. And I really love your latest book. It's quite different to what you've usually done. It's got beautiful artwork and it's called Your Turn.

6:04Can you tell us about why people are waiting to be picked? Why do you think that is? Why are we used to this security of a nine-to-five job? Well, part of it goes back 200 ,000 or so years. If you lived in a tribe, a Neanderthal or a Neolithic human, walking around the steppes of Eastern Europe or Northern Africa, there was a chief. And if you offended the chief, if you spoke up too much, they were going to throw you out. And if you got thrown out, you would be eaten by a lion and you would have no grandchildren to pass your genes onto. So we evolved culturally and probably physically to understand that obeying people in power was a good idea.

6:50And this was certainly compounded by public school, compounded by the industrial age. You know, if you start insulting Henry Ford, Henry Ford's going to kick you off the factory floor and you're not going to have a job anymore. And so being picked, which is amplified by television, by government, by celebrity culture, is something that we seek. One study that I can't believe is true, but is, a researcher talked to thousands and thousands of high school students, and he gave them a choice of five jobs they could aspire to when they grew up, including Supreme Court, justice, senator, successful entrepreneur.

7:28But far and away, the job that was the most popular among 17-year-olds was assistant to a celebrity. Oh, wow. Not even celebrity, assistant to a celebrity. Because if you're the assistant to a celebrity, it means someone picked you. It means you have proximity to fame without any of the fear or risk of fame. And so it goes really deep. And entrepreneurs are infected with this. And they think that their win is getting picked. And if we talk about apps, and I know you have an interest in this, the challenge with the app store is that there are millions of apps in there. Last year, the app infrastructure paid more money to app developers than Hollywood earned from all the movies they make.

8:21Now, that sounds like a big number, except for the fact that Hollywood releases about 400 movies a year. And there's millions and millions of apps. So it's a little bit of a sucker's game, especially if you think that the only way your app is going to work is if Apple picks you to be on the front page of the iTunes store. Because if your whole mindset is, I better get picked by Apple, you're going to lose. because the odds of getting picked by Apple are about the odds of getting drafted to play in the NBA. Yeah, look, you know, that's actually funny because we, this is a funny story. We're actually, we're picked by Apple.

8:59I never expected it. And they asked us for promotional cover, like promotional artwork, and they never got back to me. How strange is that? I don't mind. Like we don't, we don't need to be picked. Question, what would you like to say to anyone listening to this that is sitting on the fence that has an idea around a business or a project or a problem that they're really passionate about, what would you say to someone standing on the fence right now? Well, it's going to surprise you. The first two things I would say are, I don't care about your passion and I don't care about your idea. That these are myths that hold us back.

9:41You do not need to be passionate about your idea and your idea does not need to be a good one. What you need is thirst. You need to be a thirsty human who is intent on learning and shipping. The idea is not to go big or stay home. The idea is to start small and start now. And that means do something that someone will pay you$5 for. Put an idea into the world that someone will respond to. Find someone who needs your help and help them. That if you start shipping this small amount of work, if you start putting ideas into the world and watching them morph and grow and change people, you will cease to be afraid and you will stop looking for the perfect idea and you will stop waiting to be super passionate.

10:31That the work, the professional does the work of shipping stuff and doesn't wait around for perfect. That good is more than good enough if you can get into this game and be professional at it and then keep playing. When you talk about shipping, you have a very high quality, high standard of work. I've had some friends that have done your internships and they've told me about how hard you push them and how high your standard is. How do you know when good is good enough and when to ship? Well, let's agree that perfect is silly because nothing that you admire is perfect. There is no electronic device.

11:14There is no hotel. There is no steak at a restaurant that has ever been perfect. So we're not going to seek to be flawless. The definition of good enough is it's good enough for the customer to be delighted enough to talk about it. Delighted enough to come back for more. Delighted enough to miss it when it's gone. So good enough doesn't mean junk. Good enough doesn't mean what the hell. Good enough is actually a huge standard. It says, would the person I'm offering this to miss it if I didn't make it? And most people don't meet that standard. So I want to just make it clear, if you were sitting there saying, I can't ship because it's not perfect, you are hiding.

12:00But if you were saying, oh, what the hell, and put it out there, you're also hiding. That the place of not hiding is, I've got a lot at stake here. This is magical, but I can't wait any longer. And that's great. A few more questions around you. You're studying a lot of facts. I've always been curious to know who do you learn from and who influences a lot of your decisions and where you have all your projects and your ideas and everything that you work on? Well, let's think. I'm most inspired by my readers, most inspired by people like you who show up and do something that never occurred to me and do it consistently even in the face of a stumble or two.

12:46Who do I learn from? them. I read a few hundred books a year. I don't have to finish them. I just read them until I get the point. I read hundreds of blogs a day. And in terms of facts, 66 % of the time I make them up.

13:04Are there any game-changing notable resources that has really impacted you? You always talk about Zig Ziglar. Is there anyone else? Oh, I think there's a hundred. I also talk often about Pema Chodron. I talk about Krista Tippett and her podcast, which is so powerful. I talk about my friend Tom Peters, who I knew and have known for a long time. Jay Levinson, who I was lucky enough to bring into the world of book packaging and did a bunch of books with him. People like Amanda Palmer. Her new book is really something. Jackie Yuba has written a couple of great books. Bernadette Jiwa, J-I-W-A, who is from Perth but is moving to Melbourne soon.

13:49Her blog is fabulous and so are her books. Pam Slim has written some great books. The work of early digestible science fiction from Neil Stevenson. My friend Isaac Asimov, who I knew years ago before he died. I read a lot of science fiction growing up that changes things. Cory Doctorow, just by himself, meeting Cory Doctorow is sufficient for somebody to be inspired on a regular basis. So there's quite a long list and I try to name check people as often as I can. Yeah. So you're always meeting people and you're always consuming stuff. I'm curious, can you give us an insight? Because I did not expect you to just jump on a call with me that quickly.

14:34What does Seth Gurdon's day look like? What are you working on right now and how do you manage your time? I work super hard not to have a typical day. The consistent things are I don't watch television and I don't go to meetings. And those two decisions save me eight to 10 hours a day. So it's eight to 10 hours a day I have that most people don't have. And I strongly recommend and you try it. And other than that, the goal is to do this work that's worth doing. And sometimes it means locking myself up in a room with no distractions. And other times it means talking to people who are working on interesting projects.

15:15I give probably 30 or 40 speeches a year. I run a few seminars on my own. We're getting ready for one in March now that's sold out today. So it's a mixture on purpose. You know, I'm super lucky that the internet likes people with ADD, because if it hadn't shown up, I would have been in really big trouble. Yeah, look, you mentioned the internet, and I always tell people this, like, if you were going to start something, now is the time. The internet has changed the game. It's changed the playing field, like, and you say it all the time, you know, anyone, anyone with a voice can have one now. Yeah, if you want to sing, sing.

15:51If you want to talk, talk. Here's a microphone. And the people who aren't grabbing the microphone are hiding. And I think almost everyone has some generosity in them, some insight in them, some idea or notion or concept that would make the world better if they shared it. And if we can just shift our posture to one of generosity, I think we'll see an enormous step forward. Let's switch gears and talk about the Acumen Fund. Can you tell me why that is so important to you? Sure. I think the Acumen Fund is one of the philanthropies that is working to change the endless emergency of poverty. So let me decode that sentence.

16:37Poverty is a very effective way to raise money in the short run. You know, give us some money or this kid will die. That idea of a bag of rice to a hungry person is at the heart of what made us philanthropists 10 ,000 years ago. The problem with that approach is in a world of more than 7 billion people, you're always going to be short. And instead, what we're looking for is a scalable solution so that once and for all, we live on a planet where everybody has enough. And I think the way we get there is the same way that Howard Schultz solved the coffee shortage in the United States, that there used to be no Starbucks.

17:22And now there's more than 10 ,000 Starbucks. How did that happen? Did he do a fundraiser and then build a lot of Starbucks? No. Every time he builds a Starbucks, he makes enough money to build another Starbucks because Starbucks pay for themselves. So the idea of Acumen is to invest in entrepreneurs who will build businesses that do business with the poor in a way that makes the poor better off and makes enough of a profit that they can do it again. Because the way markets work is no one engages in a transaction if it doesn't help them. So if you buy a coffee for$3, it's because you think it's worth$4, not because you're doing them a favor.

18:03So some of the companies that Acumen has funded include VisionSpring, which sells reading glasses to people in remote villages who are in their 50s and can't see anymore. If you buy a pair of reading glasses for$3, it will pay for itself in two days. And VisionSpring will make enough money to go sell somebody else a pair of reading glasses. Or Delight, which is selling solar lanterns that replace kerosene, which is dangerous and expensive and dirty. or A to Z, which is a factory in Tanzania that makes malaria bed nets so that not only is it enriching the community, it's saving millions of people from dying from malaria.

18:43Or Ecotact, a company in Kenya that runs pay toilets in places where there is no alternative. So you can either poop in the street or you can have your dignity for a shilling. And they can use the money from a successful Ecotact to open another one. And so if you get any of these businesses right, what you end up doing is solving the problem because they will keep scaling until there's no one left. And that's the magic of commerce, right, is that businesses grow until they can't grow anymore. And the other reason that I'm fascinated with Acumen is that Jacqueline Novogratz, the woman who founded it, is an extraordinary human being who brings her whole self to this mission and does it with such clarity of purpose that it inspires me every day.

19:34hey founder fam i want to take a quick break from the show to tell you about something we're really excited about our black friday offer because this black friday deal is different if you're listening right now chances are that you want to start a business of your own or you want to scale up your existing business and if you've ever said i'll start one day or maybe i need more help one day founder plus was built to help you make it happen we have a 43 step program with over 600 lessons taught by real multi-million dollar e-commerce founders to help you start and scale your own e-commerce brand.

20:06And for this week only, you can join Founder Plus for just$299 a year. It's normally$499 and you can lock in that price for life. That's$200 off every single year, backed by our 90-day money-back guarantee. Picture this, with the help of Founder Plus, you could be running your own Black Friday sale this time next year, or you could be smashing it out of the park, smashing all-time records. So don't miss out. This deal closes soon. Start building your business today at founder.com forward slash plus. That's P-L-U-S or click the link in the show notes. All right, now let's jump back in the show.

20:46Yeah, no, it's, I've donated a lot to it from, from you and it's, it's a brilliant cause. Well, thank you. Let's talk about what it takes to build a successful business. You've built quite a few. It's something you've done many times in your career. What does it take? Well, let's be clear. I've also built even more unsuccessful businesses. Yeah, that too. Yes, you mentioned that a lot. And I think that one of the things it takes is a willingness to build an unsuccessful business, that if you have to succeed, you will probably fail. because you're competing against everyone else who has to succeed.

21:24And like them, you're not willing to take certain risks or bring certain truths to the marketplace. But if you care about the project and you care about the customer, you will not dilute your work. And that, ironically, will make your work more likely to catch someone's attention. I've written down a lot of what I know about starting a business with no money, which is my favorite kind of business to start. and people can find it by searching for the Bootstrappers Bible online. It's free. But basically, I think that the secret of starting a business with no money is to make a service or a product that your customers want so much that they will pay you for it in advance, which is a little bit like Kickstarter, right?

22:08But the idea is if you go to a big corporation and say, if I could do this and save you$50 ,000, will you pay me$10 ,000? And most of them, if they believe you, will say yes. And so now you've identified a problem. You've identified a scalable approach to solving it. You bring resources to bear. Repeatedly solve the problem as you scale. That's very different than the mindset of let's raise$36 million in Silicon Valley and serve everyone free lunch for a year. And then we'll come out with something that will get us on the cover of Time magazine. Let's also talk about marketing. you know you're one of my favorite marketers i learned so much from you can you just tell me like there's something you mentioned there about caring you know that's to me that's something that people notice that subconsciously if you care and it's not necessarily a tactic but in in essence it can be too like just you know it's caring what are some basics around good marketing and somebody that wants to get better at their marketing with their business well here's the good experiment you might want to try.

23:18I'm assuming in this experiment that you are a good tipper when you go to a restaurant, meaning you don't always give 10 or 15%. I hope it's not 10. But if the person who's waiting on you does a great job, you give them more of a tip. Now, imagine you are marketing in human form as a waiter. Imagine that it's the, you know, It's spam-filled, interruption-oriented, filled with promises you don't keep, hyping your way through things, hoping a few people are silly enough to lurch into it, selfish, aggressive, bullying. If you had a waiter like that, would you give them a tip at all? Probably not.

24:02But when we have a waiter who is kind, clear, putting in an effort, aware of what we need, showing up when we need them, guiding us to the next thing that delights us, that person gets a 25 % tip and for good reason, right? And so for me, I am really moved when I encounter someone on the telephone, someone in person, someone who's doing their job who clearly cares. and I will go out of my way to do business with that person. And so when I do my work and I try to talk about how people can do their work, that's the goal, right? The goal is you're a human. Your customer is a human. Let's treat each other that way.

24:47Yeah, I love that. Yeah, that's brilliant. You're a great analogy. A few more questions. We have to work towards wrapping up because I know you've got to run soon. one what have you had to sacrifice to get where you are today what have you had to give up I think the biggest thing I've had to give up is the quiet certainty that I have made my boss happy

25:15this you know the apparent safety of saying everything in my inbox is done I can just relax this afternoon. And that means that I will find myself at three o 'clock in the morning writing something down on a post-it that I can't read the next morning because something popped into my head that I want to share. And it means that I never get what some people think of as the privilege of saying I'm done. And a lot of people have trouble imagining a life where you're never done. But every time I get close to the point of saying, you know what, I should just stop, I realize I would hate being able to say I'm done.

26:00So I don't think I've sacrificed very much. I've worked super hard not to sacrifice anything in terms of my family. And I don't think working a lot of hours is correlated in any way with success. So I don't. And I do think that working with more passion than most people is correlated with success. And so when I'm done with work, I'm pretty empty. And out of all your success, you know, quote unquote success in the eye of society, I know you probably see it that way. What do you value the most out of all your achievements, accomplishments? Three years ago, I was in Kibera, which is the biggest slum in Kenya.

26:43and a bunch of young men and a few young women had started a book club. And the Kabira Book Club had read my friend Jacqueline's book first and then they read Linchpin and I went to run their meeting. And watching people who by every measure of the privileged world did not have any of the things that we think are essential, eagerly, just with such detail, talking about my book, that these 40 people had read my book more closely than anyone I had ever talked to, including friends and family. It was stunning to me that I could travel 10 ,000 miles across the earth safely and in comfort, go to a place that by many measures isn't a place that most people would choose to live, and be invited into the home of this group of people and see that not only did it impact them, but that they were already eagerly impacting everyone around them.

27:47It gave me real hope for who we are as a people. And it invigorated me to step back into the kind of work that I'm privileged to be able to do. That's an amazing story. I'm with you. I think that's where the real gold is at, having that impact, seeing those emails come through where somebody says, you've changed your life. You can't put a price on that, hey? That's right. You can't. And the thing that's extraordinary is not only did my English teacher write in my yearbook that I was the bane of her existence and that I would never, ever amount to anything, but the door is still open, right? No one is going to be the next Seth Godin.

28:33No one wants her to be a next Seth Godin, but there's plenty of room for the next you because we need you, a different person, to stand up and say, here, I made this. Those doors aren't going to be open forever, but they're open right now, and I just don't see why you wouldn't walk through them. Yeah, I'm loving this conversation, Seth. I could speak to you all day. Last question, though, because I know you've got to hit the road. And action items for our audience, aspiring and novice entrepreneurs. Three action items. Well, I guess action item number one, the most important one is stop being an aspiring entrepreneur and be an entrepreneur.