482 - Seth Godin on Creativity, Generosity & The Practice

18:10Seth Godin:And I was blogging a couple times a week, and then I was blogging three or four times a day. And I only had 100, 200 readers because every podcast, including yours, including mine, starts with 50 or 100 people. That's all. Every one. And then I wrote a post called the Provincetown Helmet Insight about how people on Cape Cod ride bikes together. And that was one of the first blog posts that sounded like me, that sounded like this is a blog for other people, not just whatever the hell I felt like writing that day. And I said, I'm going to focus on this. Then I got notes, fascinating notes from people who said, you know, when you write three times a day, it makes me feel bad.

19:00Seth Godin:Would you please write less. And I was like, you know, they publish newspapers in other cities. You're not reading, you're not writing letters to them. Please don't publish the newspaper. Just skip them. But I heard that from like four people. They just like, we want to go on the street with you. So I moderated it down to every day. And then I said, there needs to be a practice here because otherwise I will talk myself out of this. And I didn't want the cognitive load of saying, do I have a good excuse to skip today? Because I always have a good excuse to skip today. And now that I know that discussion is off the table, it's off the table.

19:40Marie Forleo:That's so cool. And by the way, I'm going to ask, I'll ask you a few more questions on this, because I know we have so many writers, aspiring writers, people who imagine they could be writers, they aren't writing yet. So I think that even just this discussion is so incredibly valuable. And if I ask anything, you're like, I don't want to answer that. We can just move on. So has, I mean, over these past decades, I'm curious from even the logistical standpoint, if like the practice, like, hey, I'm going to write today, even if I don't publish this blog post, I'm going to do my practice and I have travel coming up.

20:14Marie Forleo:I am going to a speaking engagement. I am doing a workshop somewhere. So I have kind of pre-created things, but I'm still showing up for my practice. Like I'm just curious about the actual logistics as someone who runs a company. Yeah.

20:25Seth Godin:So I don't talk about the logistics much, but I'm happy to do so. I have written ahead and every night I read tomorrow's blog post and I often replace it. But at some point people started noticing I had a streak and at that point I didn't want to accidentally break it. So yes, I write ahead. This is different than morning pages. So let's talk about Julia Cameron's morning pages for a minute because they're so misunderstood. I've heard people talk about the fact that they've written in their will that no one is to read their morning pages and blah, blah, blah. Just throw them out. The purpose of morning pages, which I do, thanks to my friend Brian Koppelman, is not to write anything good, nor is it to write anything you're ever going to read again.

21:14Seth Godin:The purpose of morning pages is the same as the purpose of brushing your teeth. That you wake up in the morning and you brush your teeth because you always brush your teeth and now your mouth tastes minty fresh. And you wake up in the morning and you write a few pages of whatever. It doesn't matter. You're clearing your throat because now for the rest of the day, you don't have to write the first thing of the day. You already wrote the first thing of the day. It's over with. And now you're in the flow. So my morning pages are worthless. There's nothing in them I could ever publish. That's not what they're for.

21:46Marie Forleo:Yeah, same here. I love morning pages and they've helped me so much. And I haven't thrown mine out. I have some stacks of them. And I was actually looking at some from some earlier years and I was like, wow. And for me, they've been really cool because I can see some recurring patterns of how I torture myself. Like, oh, that conversation is still, Marie, still. Very interesting. But back to the original where I got the 7 ,500 blog post, it's like, I love that you shared that with us. It's like, hey, part of the practice, we're not trying to put out the best things every single day and this level of pressure about the outcome as you so eloquently shared.

22:26Marie Forleo:It's like, no, it's about the practice. And if Seth Godin is here telling us like, hey, half of them are below average, it's like we have to give ourselves permission to keep creating and to develop.

22:36Seth Godin:And for math people who are listening, of course, half of them are below average. That's what average means. And the other half of it is every single time, not every single, most times that I have a blog post that takes me five days to write, it doesn't resonate. And other times when at the last minute, in less than six minutes, I wrote a blog post, I don't know, whatever. So I never know. So since you don't know, since this is mostly about luck, what you do is you show up at the right place at the right time with your best effort, and then you hope that today's a lucky day. But if you're sitting there trying to reverse engineer luck, then you're hiding again.

23:20Seth Godin:And so we're back to trying to put ourselves on the hook.

23:23Marie Forleo:I have a friend who was shopping around a book and she's a lovely writer and her, I think it was her agent. There was someone who was supporting her. It was like, can you write a viral article? Another, I was like, it doesn't work.

23:41Marie Forleo:It just, it made me laugh so hard. Another favorite part of my book, page 71, shun the non-believers. You write, a key component of practical empathy is a commitment to not be empathetic to everyone. I want you to unpack that because this is really important. This is the other piece that got me to close the book, open my computer, and write away.

24:03Seth Godin:Okay. So there's four levels here. The first one is this. If our work is professional, it's for someone else. It has intentional action. Who's it for? What's it for? What change do we seek to make? How will we know if it's working? If you can't answer those questions, then you're just putzing around. Number two, once you have a who's it for, you have to acknowledge it's not for everyone. Nothing important is for everyone. It's for someone. That's critically important. Now, there's someone who it's for. They don't know what you know. They don't believe what you believe. They might not even want what you want.

24:42Seth Godin:And you have to be able to say, that's okay. because if you can't say that's okay then you can't approach them they're not going to come to you but if you can't work with someone who doesn't know what you know or doesn't believe what you believe you're toast and that leads to the last part which is practical empathy is the work of going to people who you hope to connect with to build a bridge for to open the door for who's who are a specific group and take them somewhere they're enrolled to and if it's not that person. They're a non-believer. They aren't there for you. They don't speak the same language as you.

25:19Seth Godin:They're not going to the same city as you. They're not enrolled in the same journey as you. Shun them. Ignore them. Wish them well. Buy them a slice of pizza and then move on because it's not for them. And my mom was on the board of the Albright Knox Art Museum in Buffalo, New York, one of the most important painting for painting contemporary art museums in the country. And she pioneered the modern museum store and she was a docent. So I grew up in a contemporary art museum. I was there once a week. And you'd stand there and listen to people talking to each other about Jackson Pollock or talking to each other about Degas or whatever.

25:59Seth Godin:They were in the wrong building. You could just hear that they were in the wrong building. And the answer is not to somehow justify Marcel Duchamp. the answer is to say there's uh the buffalo science museum is down the street because it's not for you you just it's not about class it's not about uh status it's just do you see it do

26:21Marie Forleo:you want to go on this journey or not yes that was the piece where something when i read that particular entry in the book i i my body was compelled to shut it and so much that came out it was so clear. And I shared a little bit of my writing with a friend of mine. She's like, this is amazing. I'm like, it was, it was channeled when I was preparing for my Seth Godin interview. So if that's not a pitch for everybody to go get practice, I don't know what is. All right. And I also love the follow-up to this, you know, in terms of shunning the non-believers, but maybe it needs more work. You write, if there are only non-believers, maybe it's not as good as you think.

27:01Marie Forleo:If you define good as work that is resonating with the people you seek to serve. And I think that this is so valuable too, because it might not be good enough and that's okay too.

27:13Seth Godin:It probably isn't good enough. And in the Creators Workshop, which is what I based the book on, the book is based on the workshop. So I've seen 500 people exchange 50 ,000, 500 ,000 backs and forths about their work. this is endemic which is authenticity because it's a trap makes people feel entitled that if they are authentic they should succeed and i'm just decoding each piece of that no authenticity isn't a guarantee and even if you're being a professional there's no guarantee that if we look at you know miles davis's 50 records 30 of them were pretty bad and he's not entitled to have kind of blue show up every time.

27:59Seth Godin:And we as the audience don't have to listen, even if he worked really hard on it. And so if we begin by saying, you know what, this probably isn't as good as it could be, we now open the door to make it better. Whereas if we show up saying, how dare you not get this joke? I worked really hard on it. This is my authentic self. I quote Adam Driver in the book. Adam is the actor from Star Wars and the Spike Lee movie and stuff. And he gives his quote, something like, yeah, but when an actor gets criticized, it's really personal. No, it's not. You're an actor. You're an actor. They're not criticizing Adam Driver.

28:36Seth Godin:They don't know Adam Driver. They're criticizing the thing you did. And you can learn from that and do it better next time or not. But you're not entitled, even if you went really deep, for the audience to say you got it exactly right. And I'm going to reiterate this.

28:56Marie Forleo:If we feel like we're returning, I think it's a good thing. You know, what does good mean? How do we define good? Why good needs to be defined before you begin? What is it for? And who is it for? What is it for? And who is it for? It's like, Even just those two questions, I feel so many of us who do creative work, so many of us who are freelancers, business owners, entrepreneurs coming back, even if you've been in the game for 15, 20 years, I experienced it like a laser beam of focus and clarity. What's it for and who is it for? Is that part of, if you're thinking about a new workshop, if you're thinking about - Everything I do.

29:40Marie Forleo:Yeah.

29:40Seth Godin:If I'm making dinner for you guys when you come over next time, it's the same thing, right? It's, oh, Marie doesn't eat gluten. Well, that's who it's for. It's for Marie. She's coming over for dinner. Don't make pasta. It's that simple, right?

29:55Marie Forleo:Yes. Yes. It feels like the best way to get started with any new book, any new program, any new offering, any new service. So good. So let's talk about there's no such thing as being blocked because being creative or creative is a choice.

30:14Seth Godin:Okay. So writer's block is real and writer's block is made up. Now, when I say block, I don't just mean the writing of a book. We've all experienced something we call a block, but no one gets plumber's block. Nobody gets talker's block or bicyclist's block. We don't wake up one morning and say, I don't think I'll be able to ride my bike today because I just am not in the mood. So what writer's block actually is, is fear of bad writing. We are afraid to see the bad writing on our way to getting the good writing. And if you tell me you have writer's block, I will say, show me your bad writing and you will not be able to do so.

30:53Seth Godin:But if you have enough bad writing, some good writing is going to slip through. It just will, no matter what it is that you do. and acknowledging to yourself that writer's block is just a myth makes it so much less powerful. It takes its hold off of you because you're not looking for external validation. You know that writing and bicycling are in the same category. You just do this thing. You might not do it well yet, but the only way to do it better is to begin.

31:26Marie Forleo:yes yes yes yes um before we get to the end part that i want you to read was there anything else there's so many juicy incredible mind opening heart opening things in the practice did i miss anything that you feel like we should have underscored well you are a model for a key

31:46Seth Godin:part of what i'm trying to teach and this model is it works better together that the idea that you're in a cabin in new hampshire by yourself and you're going to somehow bootstrap your way into creativity you might be able to muscle your way through it but it works better together and so the reason it's worth making a book and not a blog post is if you find two or three other people and you read it together and you form a support group and you form an accountability circle, your work will get better. And we need to, I mean, ironically, we're in this age where we're all separated, we're all dealing with trauma, and where we're all more connected digitally than ever before by a lot.

32:31Seth Godin:But we're using this glass between us to hide. And instead, if you can find people who are enrolled in the journey, who are committed to giving and getting feedback that's actually useful, that will change everything. And Chip Conley did that for me in 1983. He completely changed my life. Amazingly, he's also a bestselling author. Who knew when we were both 23 that that would be the case? But the fact that he got five of us together in a room every Tuesday night in the anthropology department to brainstorm new business ideas, I remember that all the time. And the only thing about it that makes me sad is it didn't occur to me to organize people.

33:09Seth Godin:I needed Chip to do it. And so I've been trying to do it ever since, right? That's what B-School is. That's what the Alt-MBA does. And the folks at Akimbo running all these workshops, they are about doing it together. And I just needed to say that out loud because you've been modeling that for a really long time.

33:27Marie Forleo:Oh, thank you. Thank you. I know we probably share some DNA here, just like seeing incredible human beings that have so much to share and so much to contribute and to see it happen from where it was like, oh, I think this is an idea. I don't know. And it's actually a reality. They're engaged. It's going, it's moving. It's going to have a life of its own. My goodness, there's no better feeling. So I had reached out to you before to see if you'd be willing to read a little bit from the end. And I think it's the perfect way to wrap this up for anyone before we go into that bit of it. You have to get your hands on the practice.

34:04Marie Forleo:It is brilliant for you. And as Seth shared for your friends and for people who are on this journey, get a few copies and talk to your friends about it and support each other. So the bit I was going to ask you about is from page 255 to 256.

34:23Seth Godin:Thank you, Marie, for letting me do this. It means the world to me. You know how lonely this work is and to see how I can land with somebody. It's very special. So thank you. Where is the fuel to keep us going? Anger gets you only so far and then it destroys you. Jealousy might get you started, but it will fade. Greed seems like a good idea until you discover that it eliminates all of your joy. The path forward is about curiosity, generosity, and connection. These are the three foundations of art. Art is a tool that gives us the ability to make things better and to create something new on behalf of those who will use it to create the next thing.

35:15Seth Godin:Human connection is exponential. It scales as we create it, weaving together culture and possibility where none used to exist. You have everything you need to make magic. You always have. Go make a ruckus.

35:33Marie Forleo:Seth Godin, thank you so much on behalf of myself, our team, our audience. You embracing your practice for all of these years has made such a huge difference to so many of us. Our episodes together, we continue to get emails and notes from people. They're some of folks' favorite. So thanks for making the time today. Adore you. And I can't wait to see what generates from your practice as the weeks and months and years go on.

36:00Seth Godin:Thank you. Hugs to everybody. We'll talk to you soon. See you. Thanks.

36:04Marie Forleo:Come on. Isn't Seth just the best? Of course he is. Now Seth and I would love to hear from you. I'm super curious. What's the biggest insight or aha that you are taken away from this conversation. And most important, how can you put it into practice? Meaning how can you put it into action starting right now? Leave a comment below and let me know. 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 are there, if you're not already, join our email list and become an MF Insider. I send these amazing emails every single Tuesday.

36:44Marie Forleo:They are fun and positive and encouraging, and I don't want you to miss out. Until next time, stay on your game and keep going for your dreams, because the world really does need that very special gift that only you have. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I'll catch you next time. Let's talk money. Most people are just one good offer away from an extra quarter million dollars this year. They just don't know how to build it. So I made an app that does it for you. You enter a few details about your business, then boom, the app generates over 20 killer high-converting offers. You pick one, the app validates it, shows you market risk, market demand, and the three customer segments most likely to buy.

37:28Marie Forleo:Then it builds everything, your sales page, pricing, bonuses, guarantee, and seven high-converting emails ready to send. Everything's editable, everything saves automatically, and it's designed to help you hit$250 ,000 $40 ,000 without the guesswork. Best part, it's$47. Go to MarieForleo.com slash 250K. That's MarieForleo.com forward slash 250K.