#343: Seth Godin on How to Say “No,” Market Like a Professional, and Win at Life

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Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferris, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to sit down. With world class performers of all different types to tease out the habits, routines Favorite books and so on that you can apply and test in your own life. This episode features one of my favorite guests. He has been on before, and he does not disappoint. He somehow manages to think and speak in finished prose and

Seth Gooden. On Twitter you can find him at This Is Seth's blog and online he's one of the most popular blogs in the world. Seth's Dot. blog is his website. Seth is the author of eighteen best selling books that have been translated into more than thirty five languages. He was inducted into the direct marketing hall of fame in two thousand thirteen, very rightly, very well deserved, I might add, and has founded several companies, including Yo Yodine and Squiddoo. His blog you can find by typing Seth into Google is one of the most popular in the world. And he has, I think, seven thousand plus posts at this point. Seth writes about marketing strategic quitting.

Which we get into in this episode, leadership, the way ideas spread and challenging the status quo in all areas. And he really walks the talk and does so in his personal and professional life. His books include Lynchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow, among others. And Seth's newest book is This Is Marketing. Subtitle You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See. You can find out more about that at Seth.blog forward slash Tim.

In this case, Tim doesn't stand for my name, it stands for This Is Marketing. Where you can also find a free PDF excerpt from the book as well as related videos. Last but not least, Seth is the founder of Alt MBA. an intense four week online leadership and management workshop. And you can learn more about that at altmba.com. In this episode, we cover a lot I really encourage you to listen to the whole thing. And I brought in questions from my own personal challenges right now, my own personal goals. Also from friends and from many of you who have voiced

certain patterns of challenges and problems and hopes and desires. So we talk about, among other things, how Seth personally deals with overwhelm and how he thinks about it. How Seth chooses projects right alongside that. How does he say no to the unimportant and set boundaries? The difference between long work and hard work. the world's worst boss, which is a very important portion of the conversation. How to find your smallest viable audience. Hugely important concept for all entrepreneurs, which pair very well with One Thousand True Fans by Kevin Kelly, which is an essay I always recommend, which you can find at KK.org. non marketing books that are master classes in great marketing.

And we also somehow managed to get to What it is like Or how we think about crafting April Fool's jokes. That was not expected and something that Seth brought up himself. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I did. I had an absolute blast and could have gone for many, many more hours.

So without further ado Please. Enjoy this episode with the incredibly talented Polymath Seth. Good.

Seth, welcome to the show. Thank you, Tim. It's such a privilege to be back. I am thrilled to have yet another opportunity to Pick your brain an expression that I loath but nonetheless seems appropriate.

in this particular conversation and in every conversation we've had Many chats. Since the last time we recorded. But I thought I would kick off with a topic that is very top of mind for me, and that is overwhelm.

And we're gonna go all over the place as is my want in this conversation, but overwhelm has come up just today in multiple conversations with friends. And they range from people who are at the top of their fields. to people who are trying to find an inflection point for themselves professionally, to people who are struggling in the early stages of different projects, and they all mentioned to me that they felt overwhelmed. And even looking around me right now My Luggage.

from recent travel seems to have exploded into piles of paper and books all around me on this table where I'm sitting. And I can't help but feel a certain degree of Maybe it is overwhelm, a what to do with all of this, I'm not sure where to even begin. And I was I was curious to know

How you experience if you do experience overwhelm because there's part of me that on my recent travels saw this documentary, Will You Be My Neighbor about Fred Rogers, Mr. Rogers. Sure. Beautiful It's a beautiful movie. And he weighed 143 for decades to the pound every day. And seem to have his life so cleanly dialed that Only towards the end did you see some of the struggles he had, but I wonder, does Seth Godin feel overwhelmed?

Is that something you experience? Oh, I've definitely felt it and it's super painful. And I think one reason it's so painful Is because it comes with shame. Yeah.

It's a shame of well there's so many people who don't have enough. There's so many people who have insufficient choices. insufficient inputs, insufficient leverage, and here I am feeling Overwhelmed, underground.

Deluged by this thing that I asked for. And the thing is it's a systems problem. Because drinking from a fire hose is a really bad way to get hydration. Yeah. It's a dumb choice to drink from a fire hose. And so what I have

Chosen to do to work my way out of it. І на лет Correct. Boundaries for me. But

decide to erect my own boundaries. You know, I remember The magical days when once a month Wired magazine would show up and Fast Company would show up. And so I knew

I could be as informed as I needed to be. Periodicals. And so the world was gating the information that was coming in front of me. But now all of us are one click away.

uh political machinations that we need to worry about from environmental information and work related stuff. And if we don't figure out Вот трули імт тас.

Then we have this system breakdown. Because We the the boundary we we used to rely on He's gone. Mm-hmm.

Are there other Uh, could you give any particular examples of boundaries you've created or situations of overwhelm that you've Found your way out of the year. Or resolved in some way.

Well the most Uh useful thing I can say and then people don't have to listen to the rest of the podcast. Is

If you can figure out how to clear six hours a day of For your life. That's an enormous R O I So

I don't go to meetings. I don't watch television. And I don't look at Facebook or Twitter. So if you got rid of those four things, how many hours a day would be freed up? And then you can say to yourself, all right.

But what did I miss? And you can add back from a zero based budgeting Method. Which one's you're missing? But For me.

Well if I am challenged and forced to go to a meeting and I look around that room and I'm imagining That those people who are just sitting there in real time absorbing something that could have been summarized in a four minute memo. That they do that three, four, five, six times a day.

Well, it's no wonder they feel overwhelmed by the important work. Because they've used up most of their day on unimportant work. And so That's the first step. And then the second thing is When

And I do feel overwhelmed when I f have fallen behind. It could be That I forgot. And they're They've changed the interface without asking my permission.

I know that I need to be able to use this software going forward. And I I'm trapped. Because It's gonna take me a long time to figure out

Macromedia freehand when they discontinued it. And I'm not happy about that, but no one cares about my opinion. So At that point

It's back to emotional labor. My labor is not digging a ditch. My labour is Do I care enough? To experience discomfort.

To get to the other side. And if I don't Then I should turn off the input. Because Sitting.

With an uncomfortable input when we don't care enough to make things better. is just a formula to be unhappy. I want to This will seem like a segue, but I think it's it's Layering.

Uh perhaps a A different direction on top of the same topic. And this is You may recognize this. A piece

Titled The World's Worst Boss. Uh-huh. And here's how it reads. The world's worst boss, that would be you. Even if you're not self employed, your boss is you. You manage your career, your day, your responses. You manage how you sell your services and your education and the way you talk to yourself. Odds are you're doing it poorly. If you had a manager that talked to you the way you talk to you, you'd quit. If you had a boss that wasted as much of your time as you do, they'd fire her. If an organization developed its employees as poorly as you were developing yourself, it would soon go under. And there's a lot more

Uh And then it closes with there are few good books on being a good manager, fewer still on managing yourself. It's hard to think of a more essential thing. to learn. And the reason there are many reasons I want to bring this up. This is from your blog. And I think that's December two thousand ten.

is that it it seems to me there are different species of overwhelm. Some are from not managing inputs. So you j you just are getting shot in the face with a fire hose. Uh and it may not even be water. You're just not choosing the material nor the volume coming in. Sure. There's feeling behind, and then there's also Managing yourself in so much as managing your priorities and choosing what to do, knowing what to do. How do you choose

Your projects. Are there times when you look at I would have to imagine there are Europe Well known guy, even if even before you were kind of Seth Godin in Marquee lights. would have multiple

Uh, and I think people very often with that paradox of choice are feeling like there's gonna be a huge opportunity cost no matter what they do. end up feeling overwhelmed or a high degree of stress. How have you navigated that yourself? Well, first I'm so glad you brought this post up. I

We still remember the day I wrote it. And it was almost a mic drop moment. After I wrote that post, I was very close to turning off my blog. Just to say I got nothing left. That's that's it. I got Uh but instead We built the alt MBA because The Alt NBA is about that very thing.

Which is Mostly choices that free people Get to make. when they don't feel like free people.

That we feel Like we've made commitments or we are under someone's thumb Or it's not up to us. But

in the medium run, never mind the long run, it is up to us. And how We make those choices. Informs our days. So I get offered something to do.

And It feels in the moment. Like it's an easy yes or no question. The the latest meme going around in unsolicited emails is this will take forty five seconds. Right. Well it will take forty five seconds to read it. But if I say yes, then it will take me a year and a half to get it

Done. No, it's not a forty five second ask, it's a year and a half ask. And what's happened as each of us has become A freelancer, a marketer, a voice. in social media or wherever we are. There are number of places in

Where you can do work for free. It's close to infinity. And The number of places where you can get paid a little. To do work.

And there are even some places in Where you can get paid to do work. And get more than a little. But the question is as the CEO of you is that

the commitment that you want to make. So I would say That When I look back at the last uh twenty eight years that I've been unemployed.

the choices that I've made of saying yes or saying a no? At the heart. Of

The career. It's not the work as much as it is deciding to do the work. And deciding what work not to do. And I get it wrong often. One way one way I get it wrong.

Is if someone offers me a speaking gig and I look on my calendar and there is no speaking gig for that whole month. I am way more likely to take it. Then if there's two speaking cakes that month. That's a really bad way to do the math.

Really bad way. And so I've gotten better At being super selective at those sorts of choices. Could you talk about expand on why that's a bad way? To make the decision. And what a better way is to make the decision.

Well it's That's A choice made on a a belief of insufficiency. Yeah.

I feel in that moment like I will never get asked to give a speaking kick again. Because here's the evidence. No one's asked me to give a speaking gig that month. This must be the end. And If it's the end and you get to play one more song on the guitar. Sure.

I'll play one more song. But I've been proven wrong a thousand times. A thousand times. that I thought I was never going to get another speaking gig, I've gotten another speaking gig.

So I need to find the sufficiency. the feeling of confidence, of enoughness. To be able to say You know what?

Life is a series of short terms, that's what makes the long term, but if all you're doing is maximizing in the short term, you're gonna break the system. 'Cause the system is not the short term, the system is the life You've chosen to live.

And You know, one of the the books I've been thinking about a lot lately is a book called Stone Age Economics by Marshall Salins. And it made his career in the nineteen sixties. And basically uh what he he's an anthropologist. What he was able to show

Didn't work very hard. And our our vision of cavemen is that they were always foraging. that they were always hunting that it was a frantic uh

Dramatic lifestyle. But he says Actually f about four hours a day. And then they could get back to the business of living. And what's happened for people who are lucky enough

to do what you and I do, who are lucky enough to listen to a podcast like this'cause they have the freedom To invest an hour or two in getting better. is We get greedy. Because there's one more thing we could grab.

But what we've discovered is if you grab too many things you drop the whole basket. And then you got nothing. Could you talk about the difference between And this is this is coming back.

Yet. to the The well, the font of all good things, your blog. This is from I believe May of 2011. Long work versus hard work.

Describe for people the difference between Long work. And hard work. Well, you know, I think we've seen a lot of people Um

Blog about this lately. And It's about how we make these difficult choices. Right. So If you're a lawyer

And Your If you are Somebody who's making it up in piecemeal.

then That's exhausting. Whereas Hard work is different. Hard work is the emotional labor. Of confronting risk.

Uh Finding generosity when you don't feel like it. the emotional risk of seeing nuance where there isn't a lot of nuance. So if we look at the platforms that are the easiest to get on.

Whether it's five or or medium or whatever. They reward Long work. The extra hour, the hour after that, the hour after that, because there's no curve. The twelfth hour does it

get you more than the first hour did. It's just one more hour. Whereas People who are willing to do the hard work. who are toiling with no obvious applause.

We're doing something that Who are Confronting things that feel Risky?

Because they understand And over time. They're not risky. They're actually generous and useful. Could you give any

real life examples from your own experience of choosing Hard work. Something that perhaps feels risky or seems risky to others, or that is not a crowd pleaser. In the short term, Are there any that come to mind?

Well I think Just about all the successes I can point to Uh would match that. First of all as a speaker The first hundred speeches I gave I paid money to give them.

And the You know, the first time I spoke at Internet World I was the number eight hundredth ranked speaker. on the list of speakers. That Most people who would like the life of someone who gives speeches.

Would like to start. Right. You know, you have to get booed off stage a whole bunch of times. Or

Um you know, when you think about the difficult work of being in a new medium. When you started your podcast, no one listened to it. When I started

It was There weren't a lot of people who were saying, Exactly, that's what we've been waiting for. And so you've got to be in the in this Cycle of Making a mess.

In order to slowly organize it into the thing that over time Will feel like the right thing. But There are two

Pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. One pot of gold is you did something worth doing. And the other one is The extra hour at the end of the day is no longer necessary. Because you've built an asset.

You're no longer on the clock. What you are is someone who's creating value merely by the thing you produced. Not'cause someone's got a stopwatch and measuring how many hours you're working. Right. It's the the decision that removes a hundred later decisions or a thousand later decisions, perhaps in some capacity. The Alt MBA in those early days Why did you have the conviction

To build that specifically. uh in just just so people have a window into your thought process Uh which might help them find the courage to also

Make some of these decisions to do hard work as opposed to The long work and there's some Very, very concrete.

examples of friends who are running into trouble with this right now, uh in in my world. But Wha what gave you the conviction, why did you have the confidence to persist when It wasn't greeted with thunderous standing ovation. from the masses immediately upon release or developing it. We all have so many more degrees of freedom.

So I have to begin by what am I not going to actively pursue? So I have a an eighteen page business plan right here for a software company that I think could be really successful. And I've run software companies. I think I know how to do it. But I have to

get back to first principles and say Have I decided to dedicate the next cycle of my life. With lots of people and the risks that go with that.

More do I wanna persist at being a teacher. Because being a teacher is The arc I've had for a long time. And I get a lot of satisfaction out of it.

So I Gotta start with that decision. So once I made the decision I'm going to be a teacher Then I'm saying well I know how to teach in one medium or another medium, but the world Changes and the forcing.

Change agent here. Is What happens when we can deliver Education. via video.

So I played with online video stuff. And I saw what was working, I saw what wasn't. And I wasn't Thrilled. Uh

What I could do in that medium alone. So putting those two things together, I said look If my mission is to teach people And I'm not a consultant and I'm not a coach.

What's my tool? where I'm gonna have the most impact on people. And so I literally went to the desert and I sat there for a few days. I went with friends but that wasn't much

Because I I said This is a creative moment for me. Yeah. I'm gonna come back from this trip and either say I have a thing.

Or I'm gonna say I'm walking away from that. And Medium entirely. Because I needed to make a leap.

And so I cornered myself. And I said, You don't need more time. You just need to decide. Lay it out. What would it be if you had to do it? So by that acting as if I built a a thing out of paper.

That was Yeah. three dimensional and you could show it to people. And I Show it to people.

And at least it. And I thought now I'm on to something'cause if everyone said it was a good idea It was probably banal. And So we

We did a a play testing, which is an old software development term where I pretended I was the system and people engaged with me as the computer. And it I said, Yeah, I'll put my name on this. Let's see what happens. And so the first time

We ran it. I knew that the people who would take it the only people Who would take it? Were people who give me the benefit of the doubt. Which I've earned.

By showing up and showing up. But You can't use the benefit of the doubt too often. 'Cause then you don't have it anymore. So that was my risk.

My risk Those were replaceable, but the trust that was serious. And So the first

Two or three days into it. There was a lot of nervousness'cause I'm not in the alt MBA. There's no videos of me. I'm not teaching it. I just built a system. And About the fifth day. Some of the people we had only

A hundred and twenty people in the first session. Some of the people started to reach out to me describing the shifts that the projects were making in them. And in that moment I said Ignoring some costs, knowing that cancelling it at this point had no cost to me.

You doesn't matter how much time I spent building it. Walk away if it's not good. In that moment I said I'm gonna stick with this. As long as we can keep making changes like that happen. And now it's twenty six sessions later and

Each time We get more confident that it works. And each time we get a different kind of person who shows up. Because the people who are showing up now or the people who Needed to wait to see that it worked.

Right. Three days in the desert. I can't just let that go in passing. What did you do in the desert? What was the format of those days for you? Well the most important thing was there was no internet. Um and So

Going for a walk, it was a beautiful place. It was sixty five degrees, there was absolutely nothing to do. And you bring a pad and you bring a paper. And as Neil Gaiman taught me, the best way to defeat writer's block is to get really bored. Yeah.

So that's what I tried to do. I got really bored. I knew I had a deadline. No one else was waiting on me for the deadline. I'm my own boss. But I used that.

pressure that I invented for myself to say. There are things you are afraid to write down, there are things you are afraid to assert. But you have to do it. Or else you can't keep talking about this thing anymore.

How do you train yourself to take self imposed deadlines seriously. Is it Because you have a cost and a trip with a start and a finish in the form of this three day trip to the desert? Is it Telling other people you respect that you're going to do this so that you have some

Shame if you don't deliver. Oh. Or is it just a conditioned response by doing it repeatedly somehow, but I I I'd love to know how you Would explain that.

'Cause people miss deadlines all the time. That they shift for themselves. Um Great question. I don't know many people with more will power than me. I think you are one of them.

I don't know how you do it. But My method is only talking about the deadlines I hit. I made a decision Uh a very, very long time ago. Uh probably when I was

eighteen or twenty. But I said, look, there's a whole bunch of work I'm just not willing to do. I'm not willing to be the person who takes good notes. I'm not willing to be the person who memorizes. I'm not willing to be the person who can sit there for eight hours doing what the boss says. I'm just not that person. I don't that would kill me. So

I gotta do something else to be worth something. So here's where I'm going to be. I'm gonna be the person Who never misses a deadline. I'm gonna be the person

who has very strict about what I do and what I don't do. And So you know, I became a vegetarian. I haven't had chicken in I don't know, twenty, thirty years. And it doesn't even tempt me. And I've never done drugs. Doesn't even tempt me.

Because I made this decision once. And so I'm really careful about promising a deadline. I'm really careful about signing up for a project. But once I do, the deal's done. And I don't have to revisit it.

And I get that People Wrestle with temptation all the time. And I'm not saying

that the method I'm describing is easy. But I am saying When we talk about bosses we admire. When we talk about business leaders or political leaders who are states people and we look to them with respect. I think you can look at yourself that same way if you choose.

And a key part of it. is to say I'm not going to be situational. about my decision making. I'm gonna be strategic about my decision making. And that choice, you only have to make that choice once. And you're not gonna be great at it at first.

But you can stop acting like a fourteen year old. and start acting like a grown up and a professional, which means And this is some place I've gotten in trouble before. Authenticity is totally overrated. Totally.

Yeah. I don't want an authentic surgeon. I want a professional who shows up whatever they feel like, right? Right. And so there are days that you will see me give a talk or see me write or something where I it is not my authentic

monkey brain saying whatever pops into its head. This is Me playing the role of Seth Godin. being the professional who does what he said he was gonna do. And if that bothers people that I'm not always authentic, I'm sorry.

But at least I'm consistent. Uh I love that. I really do. Uh Yes.

Yes, is my way of agreeing with that statement. I've never heard it put quite that way, but I I really Do not want an orthopedic surgeon who decides halfway through that he's sh it's really just not his passion to finish my knee surgery. Closely related to that.

Is Something you've talked about. It's so closely related. Maybe it's just an Inescapable.

It would seem, is This lizard brain. And you've you've Written and spoken about the lizard brain before. In a

I wanna say it was an interview with Josh Kaufman. You say that when you hear quote the lizard brain, the scared voice, what Steven Pressfield calls the resistance. And I think In brackets here we have U do precisely what it is afraid of. It's basically it's it's your compass, but backwards.

And uh You have very clear boundaries, as you said, about what you do, what you will do and what you will not do. Uh Okay. What would you say to people who are afraid of saying no, of turning things down, who know they don't want to take a speaking engagement or agree to some favor they're being asked

to perform but they they head they won't say no or they'll hedge and say, I I'm not sure, ping me in a week, even though they know the answer should be no. What would you say to these people? Who who may or may not be named Tim Ferriss sometimes. You're certainly not the poster child for this.

I know that you are a scholar of no, but let me um Let me break this into a little bit first. When I talk about the lizard brain What I am acknowledging. is that the vast majority, maybe a hundred percent

Of what we choose to do. Is done in the subconscious. And we make up the narrative in Afterwards. That that that voice in our head is a press secretary who's explaining to the media without knowing exactly how.

Why what we just did was very smart. Uh So If we can acknowledge that.

Then I can say to you, if you're hav not you, Tim, but you the listener, if you're having trouble with this idea of overwhelm or the bounty or saying no or focus. It's not because you're a defective human. It might simply be Because you haven't trained

For how to deal. With The chemicals that run through your brain. When you are confronted with things having to do with sufficiency, insufficiency, shame, fear, Fitting in, standing out.

All of these things flow through us. Like lightning. And All you have to do is go to the movies to see that a director can toy with us at any time they want.

I they bring in some violin music and all of a sudden we're scared. Like w no one ever got hurt by a violin. So why is violin music in a movie Scary. It's because We've been hardwired to believe that just before the bad guy shows up you hear the noise, right?

Well Those things Go really deep into us. It's Pavlovian. I don't know if that rings a bell or not, but the idea is Sorry, I can't resist. Oh, it was good.

The idea is that of course that's happening to you. It happens to all of us. Great. It happens to all of us. Now what will you choose to do about it? If you want, You can choose to be a professional. And so surgeons

Always wash their hands. Even if They figured out they don't need to today'cause there are no germs. She still washes her hands,'cause you always do. 'Cause that's part of what it is to be a surgeon. So

If Your incoming that's non productive. You've gotta figure out what's the equivalent of the hand washing, what's the equivalent of the method That you're gonna use

Your cognitive strategic brain have a say before you get sucked in by the emotional Reaction.

Or If it's Difficult. For you to say no. One thing that I find really helpful

His right Four paragraphs. That are thoughtful and generous and insightful. About why you're saying no.

Copy it. Put it into Text Expander. Ampersand no. So any time someone asks you this you can write ampersand no and all four paragraphs. We'll come to that person. It took you no effort whatsoever.

They end up feeling okay. you end up feeling free and you can get back to your job. Right? And That hack is just a hack.

But it's the hack in the service of Why are you here? What's the change you are seeking to make? Because We'd like to talk.

About the fact. That we are meaningful specifics. as Zig Ziggler would say that we are here to make an impact. But if you say those things, but then you act Like a wandering generality.

you're not gonna have the impact you want. For people who are not aware, Text Expander is a software program that allows you to type out something in shorthand that then auto populates something else that that's been predetermined. So that Ampersand or the and symbol no would then bring up the four paragraphs.

that you have Carefully crafted once. to be a a polite decline. It's a great program.

Yes, and I I was talking I was Text expanding my explanation of text expander. Uh What are some of your equivalents of hand washing. And just just to to buy time or maybe just to hear myself talk, I'll share one that came to mind when you said that, which was

As a rule, if if anyone tries to rush me to make a decision very quickly, the answer is no. So if if someone is trying to use extreme time pressure to get me to make a decision, the answer is default no. Uh Which which has saved me more times than it has in any way hindered me.

uh and that's that was I think a product of necessity probably five years ago. Uh World of startups. And uh we're closing around in forty seven minutes.

Right. Maybe we can squeeze you in forty seven dollars. Are you in no your legal doesn't have time to review documents, that type of stuff. Uh What what are some of the uh Any examples that come to mind, yours or from other people of of the the hand washing. Well I'll give you uh two edges. One is th I decided what I was gonna do for a living.

And I decided what I was willing to do for free. Mm-hmm. So if you want me to give a speech You have to pay me. On the other hand

If you want to read my blog post It's free. Mm-hmm. Um If Uh

You Show and ask me to endorse your sports team I will say no. But if you ask me to blurb your book, I will consider it. Because for free

Because Done. If I can find a worthwhile book. I'm happy to put my voice behind it. But if you want me to endorse your singing career

No, I don't do that. Sorry. And so being clear about where the free stuff is and where the expensive stuff is. Eliminates Eighty percent of the people who are hoping to have some sort of transaction with me.

Because I get it that it would be really fun to come to your conference In Wisconsin. I I understand that a vacation in Wisconsin would be really fun. And Here's my problem with that. Number one, I would have to every day think about where I want to go on vacation next.

And number two is I couldn't be fair to people who had hired me to give a speech. Because why do some speeches go for free and some speeches not? So by being clear about that, the person in Wisconsin who has a great conference and I'm sorry I can't come. I don't have to negotiate with them. Because there's a price list.

And interesting aside, price tags were only invented a hundred and twenty years ago. And We needed them. Because we couldn't trust sales clerks. to haggle.

That before that the owner and the sales clerk were the same person. And haggling makes me Gives me no pleasure. Some people like to haggle. I hate to haggle. And so I don't haggle.

I wanna come back to book blurbs here in in a second. This is a perfect example, I think, to to explore some meta questions and Before I get there, I want to say that as it relates to speaking engagement specifically Speaking of

I don't really do speaking anymore. uh it was sort of categorically one of the things I decided I I did not want to apply much bandwidth to Uh even though there are times when I enjoy it, but Part of the reason I found it so stressful is and I I think you gave me some very good advice actually very, very early on, many, many years ago, as it related to speaking because you're such a a pro in that arena. is that every speaking engagement was a w a one off case by case

negotiation and consideration, which just drained every calorie of decision making out of my brain each time it took place. And uh you have some f uh really fascinating ways we don't we don't necessarily have to get into if you don't want to about how you choose what to do or price what to do. Uh a friend of mine, Josh Waitskin, gave me great advice many years ago Which was Uh and he he does. I don't think really any speaking anymore either, but he was the basis for searching for Bobby Fisher. Some people might think of him as a chess prodigy, brilliant guy. And he told me at one point

That Long ago he decided free or full price. And what he meant by that was Only he only did two types of speaking. Free for causes he felt were worthwhile.

And absolute full price and no negotiation, no twenty percent discount, no We'll do it for half price because of X, Y, and Z Uh and I took that And implemented it as Every time a company paid me a price that was a new high price for me.

They set a new high water mark and that became the new standard price. So so it was free or And it worked really, really well. It was incredible how de-stressing that was. But book blurbs. Uh you mentioned as it related to speaking engagements that you wanted to be

fair or feel that it was fair, so you weren't picking and choosing. So I have categorically decided. I don't do moderation very well with Which often leads, I think, in my mind to this one off decision making. I'd like to make the one decision that removes a hundred decisions. So the book blurbs I just decided, I I have so many friends ask me for book blurbs. that I do not want to

I don't even want to consider the social cost of having to pick among them for Buckler, so I don't do any. I How do you handle that? You must get sent. Mountain of books.

uh or at least get emails from people you know who are authors asking for book blurbs. How do you How do you vet them and how do you gently let down people? All right, so let me go to the first part first and then we'll come back to book blurps. Because I think we can broaden this to anyone who's a freelancer. Perfect. Okay. So freelancers

have a long work problem. Which is That if you do work where I can find a substitute. The only way to move up. is to work more hours.

And That sucks. Because Mm Ends up

Being erased to the bottom. And you're then you're on fiver bidding, you know. Ten dollars for a day's labor. But some freelancers do great. Why do those freelancers do great?

Number one, they have better clients. Better clients. challenges you to do better work. Better clients. Do take your better work and run with it. Better clients put you in front of

Better work. And so If you are frustrated as a freelancer, begin by getting better clients. And The way you get better clients is by turning down lesser clients.

So that you're Free up enough. To do the hard work. necessary to be appealing to a better client. If you have a lousy client Fire them.

Even if it means you'll be doing nothing. So that you can go back to looking for better clients. But then the other thing it's really important to understand. And it's not just businesses, it's human beings. In their

Daily life as well. Price is a story. It is not an absolute number. So at Tiffany's ring. Six thousand dollars. If you buy it brand new.

Walk six blocks down to the Diamond District and Seventh Avenue in New York. You can sell that brand new Tiffany's ring that you paid six thousand dollars for. For a thousand dollars. What where'd the other money go? Right? It's not used. Where the other money went is

The person who bought it at Tiffany's was paying for the privilege of buying it at Tiffany's. And so When I think about the the market for

In this case speaking. There are tons of people who can give a very good speech. But they are not famous. And as a result The person who hires them cannot go

to the people who they work with and say great news. We hired Jimmy Bluestein. Because they would say, Who's Jimmy Blue Stein? So What's actually happening when they hire you to give a speech is they are hiring the story

Of They had enough money. to pay Tim Ferris' current high price to get Tim Ferris to come on a plane and be in the room. And There's a lot of value in selling that product.

Because It's a signalling strategy. And it's worthwhile. So if you're Milton Glazer. And you w and someone wants Milton Glazer to make their logo for them, Milton would say it's two hundred fifty thousand dollars.

And you say, that's crazy. I can hire some kid on five or for twelve dollars. And you might even get the same logo. But what you wouldn't get is the ability to say to the board of directors we got Milton Glazer to make the logo. So

the the hard work here of building a career as a freelancer Where you're gonna get paid fairly. Is having Yeah. Willing

Doing the hard work to get better clients. And then having the guts. To turn down people. When they want to hire you.

So that's my rant about Pricing. Um and in terms of Uh Well I'll leave that part aside.

And then in terms of blurbing. Here's what happened. I do I have evidence To show. That in almost every case

Blurbs do not sell books. And so Why do authors even want blurbs? And here's what happened to me. When I was shifting from being a book packager where I did a hundred and twenty books in ten years with a small team

Almanac and things like that. To being an author. I sent a book called Get What You Deserve, which I wrote and Jay Levinson was my co author. To Tom Peters. And I had met Tom a couple times through the years

But We weren't. Partners are Golf buddies. And Tom sent me back a blurb.

And that blurb changed my life. Because I started walking through the world as the kind of person that could have written a book that Tom Peters liked. And Tom's point of view is Is this book worth more than thirty dollars?

'Cause if someone's gonna pay fifteen for it, and I think it's worth more than thirty Wow. What a great thing I've done for the reader. By pointing out a book that's worth more than it costs. I'm not saying it's the best book ever written.

I'm just saying. This book's probably worth your time. So for me I made a bunch of rules. The first one which I have to live with, though I'm not crazy about is

If you don't have a publisher I'm not gonna believe your book. And the reason is because otherwise I'd have to deal with infinity. And If a publisher

Is Getting behind a book. the value of my blurb to you and your career is worth more Because now your editor

Will support your book more and thus it will work, right? Right. If you send me a note. Yeah. H

makes it clear your favorite trading scammer. Then Like here, I pre wrote the blur for you. You don't even need to read the book. I'm not gonna believe your book. Because that's disrespectful.

I read everything that I blurb. And most of the time I have to say I don't have time to read your book. And I mean it. But if I have time to read your book I will either

Find things in it. That are worth the time and energy you're asking the reader to put into it. Or I will tell you that I got very busy. I will not send you a note explaining why your book is no good.

Because I I've tried that even with people I care about. It's a bad plan. Right. Uh what is the wording for I got really busy

Look like it's a good thing. If you remember. I do remember. It's I got really busy. I'm very sorry. That's it. Okay. I mean here's the here's the deal. First of all, it's true.

I am really busy. And this wasn't didn't rise to the level of I'm gonna need to put even more time into this. to be able to dig something out for you. But the other thing is Yeah. More words.

Don't make the person feel better. People want to be seen But they don't want to be snowballed, right? They don't want a blizzard to come at them. They just want to know You understand that This isn't good news for them.

You're sorry that you don't have good news for them. Let's move on. Because It doesn't Pay for anybody.

for me to go on and on and on'cause if I'm really busy I don't have time to go on and on and on. And I am sorry, I'm too busy to read your book, but here are three pages on why I'm too busy to read your book. Uh So the the topic Of

Or directive. of choosing better clients Is I I think part and parcel of Thinking clearly.

And You are very very good at at I think thinking and communicating your thinking clearly. And In

Well, for first of all you You have a new book which would have been mentioned in the intro already, but I'd like you to very briefly Tell me about it. And therefore the listeners about it.

the the clarity of sort of purpose and thinking is reflected I think very well In a discussion you have in the book about the quarter inch drill bit. And I'm not not sure if uh whenever I read books, sometimes it's like all right, my book my books tend to be d d disturbingly unnecessarily long. So I'm like oh oh Jesus. Did I write that? What was that thing that I wrote about? Hope I can recall it. But uh perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the new book, why you wrote it, and then the quarter inch drill bit.

Well, Ted Levitt was the godfather of marketing in the early nineteen sixties. He wrote a paper called Marketing Myopia that changed the game for a lot of people. In that paper in Harvard Business Review he wrote. No one buys a quarter inch drill bit because they need a quarter inch drill bit. What they need is a quarter inch hole.

That's what you should sell though. In this book which is called This Is Marketing and which I'm hoping will be a seminal uh a dividing line. In

How we view Where we are. H Paper was. I point out no one needs a quarter inch hole. What would you possibly need a quarter inch hole for? What you need

the the expansion bolt so you can put a screw in the wall. But actually you don't need that. What you need is to put the shelf on the wall. But you don't really need that.

A place to put the books that are cluttering Your bedroom. But you don't really even need that. What you need is The way you will feel When your spouse

Thanks you. For cleaning things up. What you really need is safety and security. and a feeling that you did something that was important. That's what we sell.

And it turns out that's what we sell when we sell everything. And The thesis of this is marketing is that there's been four revolutions.

in memory. The industrial revolution of Oh, we can make stuff. Right. Uh

And the stuff we've been making keeps getting better and better. The second one was This revolution that Computers can calculate things really well. Which

Or enables a robot. To help build a car. The third one is computers. as databases moving Information from far away to here and from here to far away, the connection economy.

But this last one. is the one that every one of us gets to touch. And it's the revolution of marketing. Which is Yeah.

Now each one of us has more power than Procter and Gamble did. fifty years ago. Each one of us With a keyboard.

is connected to more than a billion people. And my thesis is that we're responsible for what we do with that power. And that if we want to we can do work that matters for people who care. That we can make things better by making better things.

And The people who regularly read my work will recognize this, but I needed to put it in a book so they could share it with their team. They could share it. with the people around them.

Because I think If we catch our breath right now. We won't have to have this race to the bottom of privacy prying, spammy

Every page on the web is Looks a little bit like a porn page'cause we've tested it to death. And maybe instead we can go in the other direction and say There's a group of people Who need me.

Who need my voice, who need the change I want to make. If I can find that group the smallest viable audience And delight them. They will engage with me and they will tell the others. And this none of this is in Kotler. None of this is in

Marketing. nineteen seventy, nineteen eighty. None of it. So We Are swimming in this water, but we don't see the water.

And I wanted to be able to put a stake in the ground and say Here you go. I've been doing this for thirty years. This is what I see and if you're working on things I I hope you will read this. Because this is my best shot at helping you do better.

I wanna pull out three words that you just mentioned because you n you and I have chatted about this uh Not sure ever publicly, but the smallest viable audience. Can you ex can you define what that means and why it's important?

If this isn't your first Tim Ferris podcast You are a fan. of Tim and the way he Engages with the world. And yet

Nighty Nine percent of the people on planet Earth have never Heard. of Tim Ferris. They haven't bought any of his books, they haven't listened to a word he's ever spoken.

So here's somebody who's successful beyond our wildest dreams. Who is Unknown. How can those two things coexist?

Well the answer is Right. The mainstream media has pushed us To fit in.

To be average. the masses,'cause masses and average are the same thing. But everyone's trying to do that. There's only room for one Kardashian. Right.

Everyone else is sort of Eighty percent down the list. But if you can Find the guts. To say there are two hundred and fifty people.

who care about tilt shift lenses as much as I do. And I'm gonna make a tilt shift lens for those two hundred and fifty people that changes their life. They will find you. Because that's their drive, that's their mission. And so the attention economy Basically teaches us

That you are not in charge of what people look at. They are. And if you go where they are looking You will do way better than if you insist, That people look at you.

How does one begin to pull back from the The drive the temptation to make everyone their customer and Define who they're

Smallest. viable audience. Might be. If if someone is currently let's just Take this may not be b the best example. So feel free to come up with a better example. But let's say someone is creating a YouTube channel, they've been doing it for a while, it hasn't quite clicked.

They're not sure what they're doing wrong, but they're trying to appeal to Moms or they're trying to appeal to men between the ages of twenty and thirty. I've this could be a terrible, terrible example, but How would you suggest someone start to niche down? Are there questions they should ask themselves? Any particular Resources or otherwise that you would suggest?

Oh, it's a great example. Here's the thing, it's not your problem isn't greed. Your problem isn't that you are Trying for more and more and more. Your problem is fear.

The fear of someone saying you're not as good as you say you are and the fear Of Once you've narrowed it down. to the five hundred people.

To be rejected by those people. is really hurtful. Because there's no one left. That's all there is. And

Living with that fear. is the hard work of the professional. So that The way we niche it down is by Committing.

To wanting. To niche it down. To not have false Nishes. That are actually just excuses for reaching everyone.

But to be really Really specific. So if I think about Um I don't know, a sushi place in New York City.

Most of the sushi places in New York City Are sushi places. They're just they're in dis they're interchangeable. But if you were required to have a sushi place. That could pay the rent. Only being open.

twelve hours a week. Or If the limit was We're gonna charge four hundred dollars a meal. Now

By default. You've eliminated almost anyone. who would want to engage with you. The only people who are left Are the people who want something?

That is not available. in a traditional sushi bar. you've gone to an edge. a gender or age or income. It's an edge based on psychographics, and what does this person dream of?

Which requires empathy. And empathy is the other part. That makes this difficult. Because here's the thing. People don't know what you know.

They don't want what you want. They don't believe What you believe. And yet you want to serve them. So what you have to do

Is acknowledged. That they are right. They are right in wanting what they want. They are right in needing what they need. And maybe

You can earn their enrollment. And teach them. A new way to be. But you can't succeed by insisting. That people

Аю. Because they're not. A there are there any highly, highly, highly niche Companies

businesses could be small, could be Not so small. That You are particularly Fond of.

Any that any that come to mind. Well, in the book I talk about penguin magic, so that's an easy example. Mm. Penguin magic. Almost no one listening to this has ever bought anything from them.

And yet they're a multi million dollar company. Magicians, professional magicians. Don't need any more magic tricks. Because they do the same twelve tricks every night. Different audience, same tr twelve tricks.

Amateur magicians, on the other hand, are have the same audience all the time. the m the long suffering family members and co workers have to watch this trick again and again. And so you need new tricks all the time. So that's what Penguin did is they said what would be the Perfect.

Website. For someone Who's exactly that person? And that's what they built. And there are a hundred little details if you visit Penguin Magic that you'll see.

Yeah. probably aren't interesting to you, the outsider. But to someone Who's like this. This is what they dream of. And by

obsessing about that niche and ignoring everyone else. They have managed. To succeed. Or an example Totally at the other end of the spectrum.

Yeah. I'm talking to you at in Scott Harrison's office at Charity Water. Charity Water has raised a quarter of a billion dollars. To bring water to people who don't have clean water.

And Most philanthropists don't give them money. And most foundations don't give them money, and most individuals don't give them money, and And that's fine. Because for the people

Who wanted This kind of interaction is It's exactly what they wanted. So you have to shun the non believers. I'd say yes.

You want to give money to the American Cancer Society, please do. That's not what we do. We do this. And this I this statement we do this and being clear about what this is and why It's totally different. Then the freelancer who says what do you need?

Because What do you need? Works great if you're the local handyman. But it stops working great if suddenly there are a thousand local handy men. And

Everyone's a click away. Charity Water's a a really good example. Uh f I'm familiar with Charity Water Uh spent time with Scott and They did a number and do thing do a number of things very differently. Uh they were, I suppose, even more remarkable in the very beginning, uh because at that point th and many others hadn't started emulating them, but

Very design driven. aesthetic driven nonprofit in a sense. Uh there Collateral. their approach to web design to experience design with events is

uh very much targeted to particular psychographic sort of the the the Mac book crowd for lack of a better description and uh they also made they distinguished themselves among uh other ways by separating out the administrative costs Team.

administrative costs of the nonprofit from the building of actual wells and so on. uh which Very few people had seen done before. Even though they weren't the first to do it. Uh so I'm glad that you brought them up.

Yeah and That you also brought up constraints. Like you mentioned, with this Hypothetical sushi.

applies constraints to arrive at Could you talk to If possible, and you can take this any way you want, or anywhere you want. The the importance of smallest viable audience as it relates to charging enough or charging more because

I I know so many entrepreneurs, uh or know of so many entrepreneurs who are really gifted doing things well and yet they just refuse to charge more than the bare minimum because they want everyone to be able to afford their product. as one example. There are many reasons they might cite. But

Uh I would love to hear your thoughts on charging enough or charging more, charging fill in the blank. This this I I see this as

One of the most Common Fatal errors. Uh or at least on a company or project basis fatal errors.

That entrepreneurs make. is simply pricing incorrectly. Uh Long question. But

Uh very, very much time. Yeah. Okay, so let's begin here. If you Uh So

rent housing to low income people. If you sell health care to the masses. Please, please lower your price. For everybody else. This idea that people can't afford it.

It's crazy talk. Because Let's look at dog food. The the price of Dog food has gone.

Just in the last ten years. From two or three dollars a pound. Which is the stuff at the supermarket. to forty five dollars a pound. Which is the

Keto Dog food that I bought. on a lark from my dog the other day. Um Now

I get that in a grown up adult Might But as far as I can tell, even though the price of dog food has gone up by a factor of twenty Dogs are not any happier than they used to be.

So It's not That you're trying to make the dog happy, you're trying to make the dog owner happy, and the dog owner is happier spend more money. Not all dog owners. Just the dog owners who are happier and By spending more money. That's who the product is for.

And so what we think About when we are Not building a public utility. When we are an entrepreneur Who's going to be able to do that? to the marketplace with an innovation.

His We need to please a small group of people. And one of the signals was That is available to us. His price.

And the signal If you are looking for the lowest price And everything that comes with that. We are not those people.

On the other hand, if you're looking for a fair price And everything that comes with that. the customer service, the attention to detail, the fit and finish, the voluntary constraints. We're that. So

Type four letters into Duck Duck Go or Google. N O M A Just Four Letters. And Noma Fills the screen, right?

Where did Noma come from? Well If you want to open the world's Most famous New restaurant.

Copenhagen is not a smart place to do it. And making the rule that you're only gonna serve food that you eat. harvested from within a hundred kilometers. Not very smart either, particularly if you need to charge hundreds and hundreds of dollars to do so. But they voluntarily accepted all of those constraints. Knowing

That they only needed to blow the socks off ten thousand people. I have ten thousand people walked away from that experience. Thrilled to pieces. Then They would become famous to the family, they would become

Noteworthy enough. That people would fly there. To engage with them. If they had opened Noma And said it's eighteen dollars.

So that forgives us. For cutting this corner and this corner and this corner and this corner. He never would have heard of Noma. It's true. Yeah. And I would this is Just to put it in perspective for people, it's it's it's not just the price of the meal. You have to consider that almost everyone who's going to Nome is flying in internationally.

Ha ha. Right. So these meals end up costing five, ten thousand dollars when you factor in. All of the All the indirect and direct costs. And yeah.

As you pointed out, or maybe not end yet. And because in part because of that. Uh Noma is What it is.

Which is one of if not The most. Famous. restaurant in the world.

Much like El Boule back in the day. Yeah, or consider or consider a movie like two thousand and one in Space Odyssey, right? Considered by everyone to be one of the fifty greatest movies ever made. Almost Every single critic panned it.

Yeah. The first forty five minutes of the movie Forty five minutes. No words are spoken. The first minute of the movie, the screen is black. That there's nothing about that movie. That was designed to please the crow. That's not who he made it for.

And that's how we ended up with the movie. that people still watch fifty years later. What is it The three sentence marketing promise template. Or a the I guess it's a a simple marketing

promise. And I I can certainly read this if you would like, if it makes it a little easier, but there's a template that you have three sentencing you can run with. Uh and if if if if you can pull it from memory we can do that, or I can bring it up and we can e explore each of these in turn. Do you have a preference? Tell me if I got it right. Uh

For people who believe this and for people who want that This might be what you're looking for. Is it close to that? It is close. Yeah. My product is for people who believe blank. I will focus on people who want blank. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get blank. But I I think both what you laid out and that are very, very similar in intent.

W what what is this? Why is it imp why is it important? Well what tends to happen is Companies make a thing. Then they hand that thing to the marketing department.

And the marketing department reverse engineers what they're gonna say about it to get people to buy it. And Then they come up with a mealy mouth mission statement that says nothing.

Act. Universally, so whenever the new next new product comes in, it they won't have to change their emission statement. None of this is effective. The alternative is to say We're not saying

We made this Please come buy it. We're saying we see you. We see Who you are And what you believe. And we assert assert right here, right now, we assert.

That if you're the kind of person That's believes this and is looking for this. Ві промес. That if you engage with your time and money with us

You will get that. And if you can Articulate that arc. Then You've got a shot at engaging with the smallest viable audience.

So When I think about Uh Yeah, we've we've been talking about marketing for over an hour, we haven't mentioned Apple once. What does Apple promise when you pay extra?

So A smartphone. That is demonstrably not better. Then the alternative that it Another company makes.

How do they get you to wait in line? Well what they're saying is For people who in some small way define their status among their peers. By the device that they use.

Who will get pleasure out of being able to demonstrate to their peers that That they have the resources to get the latest one. We have the latest one. Get in line if you want one.

That is Tim Cook's entire business model. That's not what Steve Jobs business model was, but that's Tim Cook's one. which is there selling a luxury good which raises the status And is of no interest whatsoever.

Are there any other Companies That come to mind

that do a particularly good job of this. And by company that could be one person could be ten thousand. I will I will stake my reputation.

By telling that every successful company does this. They don't do it on purpose necessarily. But the thing that made them successful Is that they did this. Yeah.

There is almost nothing That launched to the masses. So I remember The first time I used Uber.

And I did not use Uber Because I had no other way in New York City To get twenty blocks across town. I used Uber.

Because I'm the kind of person that got pleasure out of taking a magical electronic device out of my pocket. Pressing a button and having my friends Just A gog at the fact that the right That a minute later a vehicle showed up right where we were standing.

Та філін. Is what I bought. When I bought Uber. So that at the beginning Uber had almost no customers.

were people who liked that feeling. And it then it works its way through a curve, which we can talk about uh later if you want. But At the beginning That's what we saw at Amazon. That's what we saw at Airbnb. If we're talking about offline businesses, right? That's what you see at a certain kind of

Hairdresser. That's what you see at a certain kind of fashion label. That there's a line out front of Supreme. Where people are Buying a T shirt that costs three dollars to make. For forty five dollars.

Why are they waiting in line? What do they get? Who wants a supreme T shirt? Those questions aren't things you should do after you decide to be in the T shirt business. You go the other way.

You figure out what are the needs and the dreams and the desires that are people are walking around with unfulfilled. You say Hi, I'm here to help you achieve What you already wanted.

Do you have any idea what supreme is doing well, why are people waiting in line to buy a three dollar t shirt for forty five dollars? If you if even if even if you just had to guess. Is there any Can he stab you take? We need to talk about the yo yo union for a minute.

Let's let's do it. Mm. So Yoyos

Uh Banned or frowned upon. in elementary schools because of what happened last time. But every once in a while maybe three or four I'm gonna get to that. So okay. Every three every three or four years

Um A kid shows up with a yo yo. And if that kid is a low status kid That's the end of it. But if that kid who shows up is one that other kids want to be near and like

Not all kids, just certain other kids. The next day there are three yoyos. And then there are seven yoyos. And then there are fifty yo yo's and within a week and a half

Yo yo's are everywhere. And then yoyos get out of hand, so the administration passes a rule, no more yoyos. And it takes three more years for it to come back again. Like the locusts. Exactly. And so I've seen this happen firsthand. I've seen it when it worked and I've seen it when it didn't work.

And so the secret is to make sure the right kid brings the yo yo to school the first day. Because if it's not the right kid. The status roles Aren't at

Work. And you don't get the yo yo to spread. So Supremes Home run.

was that a certain kind of kid with a certain kind of status showed off his parents' money By showing up. With a t shirt that was intentionally A Aggressively.

Obnoxiously designed. And B ridiculously expensive. Because That moment of How ridiculous it was.

Created all the value. Now if the wrong kid had shown up wearing a supreme T shirt Nothing. But the right kid did it and so other kids wanted it. And in this moment Supreme made a really smart choice.

Which is the underproduced dramatically. They always sold out. They left money on the table. This is the hard work part again. They left it on the table. They left it on the table. They left it on the table. They could have sold way more.

But they believed that they would be doing this for years. And so they intentionally created This scarcity and scarcity creates a feeling of value. And so now I was

Just uh researching this a couple weeks ago down there. Most of the people who are waiting in line are going to resell it within ten minutes. That

The the they need the the line to show up in photograph So that the person who buys it at a premium Is relieved at how Well off and smart there, that they didn't have to wait in line. So the line is a tax.

That creates value. for the people in the marketplace. This cannot go on forever. It never does. But To create a fashion brand that is based on nothing but scarcity.

That's the method. It's a story that makes me think of something right here in my backyard in Austin, Texas, which is Franklin's Barbecue. And most people have never heard of Franklin's barbecue. None the less. Uh I I want to say they open at ten A.

something along those lines. And They sell out by eleven AM. Everything that they have made, all of the meat they have prepared. And that's the end of the day. They close when they sell out.

Could they produce more? Of course they could produce more. And people start lining up around six A. There are cottage industries. Coffee shops and so on that have developed to capitalize on this line. And early on It was predicted that this might last Three months, six months, a year. It's been going on for I wanna say f at least five or six years. Sure.

This line. And The food is exceptional. Uh but there is exceptional barbecue all over Texas. And it is this

Incredible. Ludicrous. Scarcity. That Become

The PR campaign in a way. Uh and the stories that people tell about it. the task rabbit they hire to stand in line, or whatever it might be. So there are two things. Two things that need to be understood here. The first one is

In a double blind taste test. They would never win. But that's okay'cause we're not double blind. No one is double blind. We know where it came from.

And so if you know where it came from, it might win because what you're actually Tasting. is what it took to get it. And there's nothing wrong with that. And this is

another key part'cause you are not manipulating people, you are serving them. They are choosing to go through these steps because those steps Make The barbecue tastes better. It's a placebo and placebo are wonderful because they don't have any side effects.

And because they Actually work. So we can be Honest. Ethical.

Generus marketers by saying that My job is to put on a show. I'm not simply a manufacturer. Someone can always manufacture cheaper than me. But w people will pay for

our trust An experience Something to talk about. Scarcity. And the way it feels.

To be part of something. That's what we build. And so what we have to figure out how to do Is build it in a way That when people find out that's what we're doing

They're still okay with it. I love How Encyclopedic your knowledges of case studies. It's it's really w one of the

For me at least, one of the things that immediately leaps to mind as a uh distinguishing characteristic of a lot of your work is pulling in and dissecting in a way, or at least observing Case studies. examples that come to mind where you think this is per is what we've been discussing is done particularly well.

Well, now that you've said that, of course Yeah. You know, I I think that When we think about the work Uh

Contemporary art. It's really Interesting to see that People who don't get the joke, completely don't get the joke. Right? They say, Oh, I could have painted that painting that Jackson Pollock painted.

It w how could it be worth forty five million dollars? But Jackson Pollock had a brother. And his brother's name was Charles. And Charles Pollock was a painter, not an artist.

Charles Pollock painted. Exactly. Like his teacher, Thomas Hart Benton. But we didn't need another painter to paint like Thomas Hart Benton because we already had one. So the act

Number one. That Jackson Pollock. Painted something no one else was painting that many people hated. Number two. That he had gallery representation in New York City and

That enabled The gallery to say. For the kind of collector That wants to earn the status with a certain set of peers. That comes from owing a painting.

That no one else owns. This is the kind of artist That you might like. That's how you get your start. And then the next step in the path is

There are curators. Who understand to hang this on the wall of their museum. There are other curators.

who understand that their career will be advanced if they're one in the middle or late ones. who hang it up. And so this virtuous cycle is created. And you go from you could have bought the painting for a thousand dollars Two now it's worth forty five million. And it is worth

Forty five million, not because You can't see it for free. Of course you can on Google. It's that the act of owning it earns you a certain kind of status in your own head.

And with a certain circle of people That's worth something, but right down the street There's a guy who collects guitars. He doesn't want a Jackson Policy. He wants

assigned You know, um Eric Clapton guitar. And Different people are making these

Decisions. based on where they think it puts them in the pecking order. Of who eats first? And who has better taste? And who's an insider and who's an outsider?

And because we live In such a privileged world That's what people are spending all their time paying attention to. I am so glad that you brought up Jackson Pollock. Uh, I've I've a bunch of

history with Jackson Pollock that you and I could talk about something like you grew up down the street. I did. I did indeed. And in fact, I There's a grocery store. before Jackson Pollock became Jackson Pollock in all caps. There's a grocery store where he used to trade his paintings for bread and eggs.

And so on. Uh before he's in in some respects, I suppose, crack the code. And I I recently found a book and there are there are portions of it that are good. I think a lot of it is is about what you would expect, which is a lot of hyperbole and high concept confusion, but one hundred secrets of the art world. I've become Fascinated by

The weirdness. uh but also on some levels the the impeccable logic of how the art world works. There's a lot of weirdness. There are certainly aspects I don't yet understand. But I found this at a really cool festival that people may be interested in called the Trans Pecos I think it's music festival, but it may just be the Trans Pecos P E C O S in Marfa, Texas, which the story of Marfa, Texas in and of itself is a kind of a crazy marketing story in in some respects. Uh people can check it out. It's in the middle of nowhere. Uh And found this book. And here's a quote from Jeff Koons, who's also

from my native New York artist and sculptor. And this'll lead us this'll lead us back to marketing, as many things do. Here's the quote. So the quote The journey of art starts with self acceptance, the subjective

Once you accept yourself, you're able to move on to the objective, the highest state, which is the acceptance of others. And I I found that worth pondering. Which which leads me To a note that I took. From Your new book.

Which is A chapter titled Marketing to the Most Important Person. And I was I was wondering and I f I I took some additional notes on that chapter, or at least a few lines, but Who's the most important person? What is marketing to the most important person? Oh it's you.

Right. It's it we have so If we're in a post industrial place where you're not spending all day working the punch press The person we spend most like where we started. Um the world's worst boss, right? In this case

What we're talking about is Who are you talking to when you talk to yourself. About what you do. And how do you come to grips?

With This self acceptance that Jeff Kuhnz is talking about. And um I love that you're bringing these pieces together because that's exactly the way I'm thinking about it. This all started With

What I saw happening Inside Uh the Alt MBA where people with talent When they felt safe.

We're Very clear. That they didn't believe in who they were, where they were going, or what They were created. And until the

They could come to grips with the fact that they had value to add. It's really difficult to have the sufficiency To have empathy. 'Cause if you're drowning You're a lousy lifeguard.

Yeah. Yes. Yes, well said. Uh how does someone

Develop. the feeling of sufficiency so that they are Sh If not on land, at least swimming comfortably as a lifeguard. So they can have the empathy for others that's necessary to be good at then marketing the gifts they have, the what they can provide.

How does how does one develop that self Compassion. And that feeling of sufficiency. Here's my best take on it. As soon as you can adopt the posture of

That you are Needed to do a generous act. Did someone in worse shape than you is drowning, and that you have something to offer them. It shifts.

From a selfish act. That is shameful. That is making a difference. So it requires us not to be selfish people. This is not double talk.

But that once we realise That there actually is somebody Who would miss us if we were gone? Then we can get out of our head and realize we are not doing this. Two

get in the light or to hide from the light. We are doing this Because someone else needs us. And so the big shift is to stop thinking of prospects.

Stop thinking about people you are marketing. Two Or at And instead say Where are my students?

Where are the people who are enrolled in this journey? Who I have a chance To teach. Because if I'm a teacher and the student is coming along for the ride I don't have to yell.

I don't have to interrupt. You don't have to hit kids with a ruler. All I need to do is is take them to where they said they wanted to go. And that

fits into the person I think most of us would like to be. Which is The teacher we would remember years later. The person who turned on a light for someone who didn't have a light. Seth, I aspire to be half the communicator you are. I I am just constantly astonished

how clear you're able to convey The thinking. Which of course in the first place must be clear to you before you can impart it to others. Uh

Does it Does very beautifully Said and I think very, very important. So thank you. Well for that. That means the world to me. And I just want to insert here, not that we're playing tennis, but

The single best written April Fool's joke in the history of the internet. was written by you. And there's a sort of elegance that's necessary that isn't in my wheelhouse. that enables somebody to have enough awareness of the narrative of the reader and enough guts To go right to the edge but not go over.

And that's not my Know you it's yours? But it was beautiful. And side. Well

It's been a while. It's been a long time since uh since since I did that. So would you mind If you ca if you want to take a stab at it, I can also take a stab at it, but do you want to take a stab at describing what that April Fools show was? Well so here's the I have now resigned from my annual April Fool's blog post when it works people send me angry notes and when it doesn't work people send me angry I wasn't getting anything out of it. But there was a tradition

Yeah. If you're a blogger on April Fool's Day, you had to come up with something using just words That would M not only get under people's skin and surprise them, but make your point. And

Your blog post, if I remember it, and it what if it was ten years ago, whatever, eight years ago. Was Um I have a confession to make. I don't write this blog. I've outsourced it as part of my four hour workweek agenda.

And this And it has been for years. And people were furious at you. People lost their minds. Yeah, I I and I made it very specific. I was like this is actually, you know, Venkatesh from Mumbai who collaborates with person A and B in Manila, uh, who does mostly copy editing and we've actually been crafting this At the behest of

Tim Ferris to prove a point which is you can outsource anything with the right set of instructions if you vet the right people and people lost their minds. Uh it was it was wild also, uh to see the response because I put it out. I happened to be I think I was in London at the time and I used that time difference.

April first in the US, which made it extra confusing very deliberately, and I went to sleep Not thinking much of it, just having a chuckle after a glass or two of wine. And woke up to Just mayhem. I mean

Arms and legs in the streets of the internet. It was just complete. Mayhem. Uh and Uh it was it was also funny, this is gonna be p very politically incorrect, but how like bifurcated a lot of the responses were seemingly by gender. Like the men were like, You fucking dick and then a handful on both sides were like, Okay, that's pretty funny and then the women were like, How could I ever trust you again? I can never trust you again. But it was a mess. It created a real mess. Now I didn't bring this up, but it's in my notes. So you are not a junior varsity April Fool's joke person yourself.

Uh So can you talk about I'll I'll start us off. Actually let me let me let me just read this. So you wrote uh okay, dot dot dot. I said it would never happen, but now In April twenty eighteen, after so many blog posts, after eighteen books, dozens of projects, and a bunch of ebooks and videos and podcasts, I'm now completely out of ideas. Big ideas, small ideas, any ideas, all gone. Used up. I've none left. So So What happened when you published that?

Uh so here's the this goes back to the empathy thing. Uh I got a lot of email. That

At first really annoyed me. And what the email Said was You're right. You're out of ideas.

I've been out of ideas for a long time too. I feel terrible for you. Here are some tips I have And how you can find the ideas again. Don't feel too badly. And What I realized was

They weren't writing the note to me. They were writing the note to themselves. And They weren't angry, but there was a lot of pathos involved in it, because they still believed. In writers block they still believed In

This Myth. that they were out of ideas and they were getting a lot of Schadenfreud and pleasure out of the fact that I also had their affliction now. Because I was the arrogant guy who said it could never happen and it happened to me and they were sort of gloating about it.

And Um Here's the thing. Writer's block is a myth. What people

get stuck on is not that they're out of ideas, it's that they think they're out of good ideas. That everyone has bad ideas. And my only argument is If you Put enough bad ideas into the world.

Sooner or later your brain will wake up. And good ideas will come. And it The bad boss problem is Your bad boss won't let you ship anything.

Because He or she is insisting on perfect. And I I've done seven thousand four hundred blog posts and I've done four perfect ones. So you just gotta keep

Okay. Making the work With generosity. Because then your lizard brain will give up. on censoring you'cause it realizes you're not gonna give up and at that point it'll just say, Well we might as well make it better.

And that volume Comes from putting one foot after the other as you have done. Seventy four hundred blog posts. That is just incredible. And I I I took some notes on Later discussion of this April Fool's joke that you put out. And uh just to underscore something you already said about writer's blog.

And feel free to correct me if this is incorrect, but roughly. Quote, no one gets plumber's block. They simply do plumbing. Creativity is work. It's not the muse or lightning or the result of burning incense. I write daily because I'm a professional and this is what I do. And I think it's a it's a it's a strong It seems to me to be a strong

commitment and then holding yourself to that commitment, whether it's doing the work daily, whether it's having the boundaries that you have, whether it's having deadlines that you Do not miss because you decide that that's gonna be a defining characteristic of you in your life because you don't want to be many other things. And to force yourself as a square peg into a round hole.

as many people Very impressive. And Um

I think a very important point. That The authenticity of maybe suffering from the the changing winds of how you feel minute to minute.

Can be Overridd. In many respects by viewing yourself as a professional, even if you're just getting started, deciding that that you are going to do the work And even through

dozens of bad ideas. Or not e not even through. have faith that through coming up with many ideas you will eventually have to come up with a few good ones. Razander and the the but versus and. You can say to yourself Mm.

I'm a writer. But no one's reading my work. I'm an artist, but no one's buy my paintings. And the butt. becomes the essence of your day.

Or you can say I get to write. And no one is buying my painting. And no one is buying my work yet. I get to paint and no one is buying my paintings yet.

Is true. You got Both things are true. So what are you gonna do about it? Well, one thing you can do about it is stop.

Well the other thing you can do about it. Is get better. And you don't get better and I spent a bunch of pages in the book talking about what better means. You don't get Better.

By getting rid of typographical errors. You don't get better by being more realistic in your painting. You get better. By serving the needs and wants and desires and dreams. of the smallest viable audience you sought to serve.

And if you're not serving them by offering them a way forward status. With tension. With where they want to go. Then it's no wonder.

There's no line out the door. But if you can turn that and into Now I see them. And I can give them what they want.

Then your work is gonna get seen. I think this is a a very complete arc. Uh they Conversation.

Seth. And uh remember someone told me Once. I can't remember who it was, but it was Someone said the What distinguishes the amateur from the professional? This was in the context of

Writing. short stories and it wasn't only what to write about it was when to end the story. So uh I want to start to wrap up with no particular

emergency rush. Because I think We've really covered More than I could have hoped for. In a very

Cohesive way. Uh are are there any other And certainly I'll mention a few places where people can find you and we can mention many more things. But are there any other particular Resources. Or recommendations that you would have, requests of people listening for things they should do.

Any any Parting comments or Or Last comments for this conversation that come to mind. Um

Well, I have to say that once Mm. You're on my agenda and my calendar. I spent a lot of hours thinking about making sure we get the most out of these conversations because you dig so deep

And it's really completely irrelevant, slightly related, probably on topic uh things I would point people to. So here we go. Um

Check out what's happening in the EU about the Balkanization Of copyright. And how a land grab is happening that could very well break the internet. Cory Doctorow has written brilliantly about this. Um

I thought It would be worth highlighting the fact that Five people. who I know have written Books about

Their non profit work or close to nonprofit work that mattered and had an impact on me. I'll read'em to you quick. Scott Harrison's new book is called Thirst and it's the autobiography of Charity Water. uh Cat Hoke who you know and her book A Second Chance. Was magnificent.

uh a walk in their shoes. by a leader named Jim Zelkowski. Was about how Jim from a job at GE Built.

an institution that's in countries around the world changing the lives of underprivileged kids. Uh the blue sweater by my friend Jacqueline Novogratz about her journey Uh in Now

Couple hundred million dollars at acumen fund. Sean Asconosi, who is not running a nonprofit. He's runs a chocolate company and his book Meaningful Work. I find that all five of these pe books fit together. And when you read them

You can apply. Ninety percent of what they're talking about. Your for profit. Enterprise.

Because it's all the same. It's value. Who are you creating value for? and why you're creating that value. I love it.

I can I can second a number of those books. And we're Would you suggest people learn more about you, more about The new book. Where would you suggest they go?

Well all the blog posts are at Seth's dot blog and if you go to Seth.blog slash T I M, not named after Tim Ferris Uh you will find This Is Marketing, which is where I put a couple of videos about the new book. I did not know it stood for Tim when I wrote the book. And uh The Alt MBA has uh some sessions signing up now for January. It's at Altmba dot com. And between all that, that'll enough to keep people busy for a while.

Wonderful. And people can find the Twitter repost of your blog if they want to keep up with the blog posts at at this is Seth's blog. Seth, it's always such a pleasure. And I always learn so much and have taken so many notes for myself. Uh I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks, boss. It was fun.

And to everybody listening, Thank you for listening. And you can find show notes links to everything, including Seth's new book, and everything that we've discussed in the show notes as per usual at Tim.blog forward slash podcast. And until next time, keep experimenting, stay safe, and have fun. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share

the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up. in the uh the world of the esoteric as I do, it could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite. of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you exclusively by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions, the go-to tool for B2B marketers and advertisers who want to drive brand awareness, generate leads, will build long-term relationships that result in real business impact.

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