Confidence Classic: Seth Godin on The Practice: How to Inspire, Embrace, & Share Your True Voice

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Okay, so to catch you up on some things, we have been talking about me working on this board position and serving on the board of this company, Health linked. Actually I've been working on two potential board seats. One has not come to fruition. The other one actually is finalized, was announced in the press yesterday and today is getting picked up by Yahoo Finance, PR investors, all these different outlets. I'm super excited and really proud of it. And one of the funny things is, and it just goes to show you never know what is going to happen is that, gosh, it must be six years ago I was pitching myself for the board of directors for the company I was a chief revenue officer and a shareholder for. I saw the board and the board was comprised of essentially men in their late 70s, all white. And I took a look at our stock performance. I knew the job I was doing and I knew how much I struggled because I needed resources. I knew we could innovate, but we needed resources allocated to the innovation. We needed a bigger picture, vision and innovation and. And it wasn't happening under that direction. What I've learned since is when you're getting blocked from something and it's so clear, you know, you are a solution to the problem, you might want to step away and say this is probably the wrong situation for me. I would get all these bs Answers, they would say, oh, great idea, not right now, maybe in the future. Timing is off. We'll definitely keep it in mind. Those are BS answers, right? There's nothing tangible there. Like, hey, Heather, sorry, we don't want women on the board. Or hey, I wasn't getting a direct answer. Or this one. Oh, hey, you're getting blocked by one person. What I mean by that is no one was being direct and honest with me, so I was allowing BS answers to keep me at bay but keep me on the fringe. So I kept working super hard in hopes that, okay, maybe next year or maybe in the future I can be part of the catalyst for change and innovation. Wrong, wrong and wrong. I was being blocked and I was never going to get on that board. And thank goodness, when you take a look at that company stock today, I'm grateful I wasn't. However, I want you to understand, if you are getting BS answers, don't accept those. Take those as information and direction that you need to move on to a place where you won't be blocked, where you're championed and encouraged and helped. And that's where I am now. So to break it down for you, the amount of work that goes into getting on a board, first of all, you have to have an expertise and experience and, or, you know, be a thought leader in some regards so that you're sought after. Number one, my social media, I've really highlighted my expertise, experience and credibility there. So it pulls people towards me. If you're not investing in yourself and in a personal brand right now, do it today. I'm so grateful. I started working on my personal brand four years ago. That was one of the best investments I've made from a business standpoint. Doesn't matter how exceptional you are, you, if nobody knows about it, it doesn't exist. So you need to raise your hand and start shining your light so you can help more people and pull those right people towards you. Instead of doing what I was doing, which was chasing the wrong people down and then beating my head against a wall because it didn't work. So back to the board. So I had to interview with every person on the board. It definitely is about someone being the right fit. So showing up as that real, authentic version of you. I didn't want to pull any punches, so I said, I'm aggressive, I'm opinionated, I'm an expert in sales and marketing. I understand operations. I'm going to want to innovate, I'm going to want to disrupt, I'm going to challenge Your thinking. And I need to know that that will work because it's a waste of all of our time if I'm here. And I also want to know if anyone has a problem with me being a woman, you know, and those were some of the things I said and total respect to these guys that I'm joining their team. Every single one of them was there applauding and saying, yes, this is why we want you. We don't want a yes guy. We don't want someone who's just like everybody else. And we like that you fill a space that is different. And I was so grateful to hear that because I've learned showing up as a watered down version of yourself isn't doing yourself a favor. Because in the long run, you'll inevitably show up as you and then people will say, well, I didn't think that was who we were getting. So I've learned go all in with you and who you are, and those right people will be your champions. And these guys have done that just over the past couple months trying to help me, whether it be filling out paperwork and forms and there's a lot of paperwork, administrative stuff behind the scenes that I was not privy to previously and I needed help with it and I didn't understand certain words and they've been great explaining that to me. And however, today, you know, I heard from some of the investors and they're excited I'm here to help disrupt and innovate and I'm so, so grateful. It's just so interesting to me that six years ago I was banging my head against a wall knowing I could help transform and grow a company that I had already proven myself for, that wasn't interested in my concepts, ideas and help. And I just want you to know this. When you are banging your head against a wall, know that you're in the wrong company, you're with the wrong people, someone is probably blocking you like they were me. And oftentimes those people don't have the courage to actually verbalize that to you. And that's from a selfish standpoint because they want to use you for whatever skill sets or value you're currently bringing. But they don't want to help you and challenge you and encourage you to grow. And those are not your people. So I'm so grateful I am now working with my people and can't wait for the next year to see what we do, the good that we bring in the healthcare industry and the innovation we bring to make great healthcare available to people in the push of a button. So super excited about that. Next, I wanted to touch on something really big that's happened for me over the. The last couple of weeks. I guess, probably, maybe two months ago, someone reached out to me asking me to be on their podcast. I didn't know the woman. And I get a lot, a lot of podcast requests, probably at least a couple a day. So the majority of podcasts I turn down just because I have a book coming out. I'm under deadlines. I have my new executive coaching business, which is taking up a lot of time. I've been working with the board on setting things up with them.

My.

My virtual speaking business has really started picking up. There's so many elements going at the same time that I just. For right now, there was plenty of time for the past three years where I did so many podcast interviews. Right now is a window in time where I can't. And one of the things I encourage you to do if you fall in a window like this is if something is important, you wanna do it in the future. Ask that person, hey, I'll be available again in 2021. Can we pick a date, Put it on your calendar, or create an Excel spreadsheet to go back to to revisit podcasts when you do have the time. For example, when my book is done and I can reconnect with these people, but try to organize these leads, not lose them if they are meaningful to you or, you know, if it's something you do want to do in the future. And I try to convey that to people. So to that end, I did say yes to this one woman. I don't even know why. I'm sure she gave me some amazing ask, you know, in a DM or something that whenever someone does something really creative or super cool, I really applaud that. And I recognize that that's not easy. It takes time. So I try to go out of my way for people who put in extra effort. She must have done that. I don't remember right now. Anyhow, so we got on a recording for her podcast a few weeks back, maybe a month ago, and we just hit it off. And the funny thing was, I almost canceled that day. I just happened to be having the worst day. You know, it was zoom school. Zoom school lunch lady. Technology issues. My Internet kept going out. I mean, you name it, it was going wrong. Maybe that was the day my washing machine broke, my toilets broke, I don't know. But it was one of those chaos days where I could barely just handle what was on My plate. I did show up and do it. I told her I'm having massive Internet problems today.

No idea why.

She was so cool, so chill. Hey, you know, let's just try it. If we've got issues, we'll just reconvene, pick another date. She was great, super gracious, and we just hit it off. And after the podcast, she and I stayed on and talked for another 15 minutes. And she was so helpful to me. She happens to be a part of a massive organization that, by chance, wouldn't you know, I had pinpointed to two years ago as one of my targets for my speaking business. I'm not going to tell you who it is yet. It's a huge organization. I will tell you when it's publicly announced. But I have been working to get on their roster of approved speakers, which, once you're on, I mean, you literally could be busy every single month with this organization. They're global, massive, massive group, really premier, prestigious. So it had been a target. And randomly, this is going way back, but probably six years ago, I received a DM from someone local in Miami who ran a pretty famous restaurant but was having challenges with marketing, sent me a dm. His business was a block from my house, and he sent me a note saying, hey, you don't know me. I'm in Miami. I'm a local, you know, pretty successful at abcd, Gave me all his info and said, if you could ever jump on a call or stop by, I would just love to get 10 minutes to brainstorm some marketing solutions for my business. He's one block away from me, so of course. And I actually eat at the restaurant, so I love having people on the inside wanting to help me. So I knew, oh, if I help this guy out, I'll never have a problem getting a reservation again. So I went and met with him. I didn't ask for anything. And we brainstormed some solutions, some different concepts, and I moved on. And then every once in a while, he'd send me a note thanking me, or just super nice guy. Very successful businessman in Miami, happens to be part of that same prestigious organization that I'm talking to you about today. I run into him at a Super bowl party a month or two before COVID and he was there with his wife and a huge group of friends. He befriended myself and my friend. We hung out with them for a good portion of the night. And he said, listen, I want to get you into this organization. I'm a member. I can help you. So he linked me up with the head of South Florida. We had lunch. This was one week before COVID And the lunch went okay. The woman, she was nice, but it wasn't a real connection. You know, it was sort of like, okay, this is part of the process I have to go through. Fine, but it wasn't amazing. And I called him after, let him know. I said, okay, we met, you know, I think there could be some opportunity on the horizon, but we'll see. Covid hit and everything ended. That is, until I went on this podcast the other day. So this woman's telling me about how she's highly engaged and involved with this organization she is a member of and she wants to help me get in mic drop moment. This has been on my wish list for a couple of years. However, I hadn't found the right in. So turns out she makes things happen. And she has put an event together for me in January. It's going to be my first opportunity to showcase what I bring, the value prop on my speaking engagements. And I'm going to be doing a virtual engagement. So as soon as it's announced, I will share it with you. I'm excited, so, so flipping excited at this opportunity because if you knock it out of the park with this company, this organization, truly the opportunities are endless and it'll be one of the largest virtual events that I've done yet. So there's so many layers of why this is fantastic and just their name recognition, the whole thing, the credibility is amazing. So to that end, it's so random. I received an email yesterday from one of my speaker agents saying, hey, Heather, I haven't talked to you during COVID Where are you at with speaker fees and what's happening? And I was able to send her the article naming me Top 40 Female Keynote Speakers for the year 2020. I was able to send her the press release of Daymond, John and myself headlining Event Planner Expo. I was able to send her so much press and just, it was so funny. It's one of those reflective moments when you say, I can't believe this because three years ago when I got fired and figured out I wanted to learn about the speaker business, I didn't even know how to get an agent. And here we are three years later, she's reaching out to me, asking me what I want to quote for virtual fees because the virtual fees are different, discounted versus the on site speaker fees. And she was asking me what she should be quoting for me. It was so crazy that I was able to respond, respond with such value in A three year window. So don't lose sight of what you can accomplish in one month. One year, three years, everything can change. The people you're chasing down may now be reaching out to you. And it's a wild pivot, but I'm so grateful for it all. Okay, so I know you remember when my son lost his dog earlier this year and how awful that was. Why I want to bring that up today is the person. Oh, my gosh. This guru that I had been trying to land for my podcast forever, since I launched it back in May of 2019, Seth Godin is the absolute marketing guru of the world and someone I so admire. If you haven't seen his TED Talk, read his books, you need to dig in or his blog, it's amazing. Anyhow, he had been on my target list. I found someone that knew him, they were willing to do an intro, and he was so gracious to agree to. Come on. He said, okay, let's do it. However, I wanna do it around my book launch. I have a new book coming out and, you know, that would really help me. Of course, Done and done. Anything I can do to support you. My son's dog passed away the day he and I were scheduled to record his show. I sent an email out to him and every other person I had meetings with that day, essentially saying, my son's dog has just passed unexpectedly. Things are a complete nightmare right now. If there's any way that I can reschedule with you, I would greatly appreciate. However, I am not gonna be able to make this interview today. And he replied immediately. Oh, my gosh, Heather, I am so sorry for you. I understand how tough this loss is. I'm so hopeful your son is okay. Please know anything I can do to help. I mean, he went on and on and on as if I had known him for years. So understanding, so kind. Checked in with me after that and I reached back out to him a couple months later when I had a handle on things again and hoped to reschedule, not knowing what he would do. I know how busy he is and right away he did. And it's so interesting to find incredibly successful people that are gurus that are so successful and see how real and kind they are. And that's Seth Godin. And to me, yes, I admire him from a business perspective. He's gonna drop so much wisdom on you right now, so just get ready. It's so amazing to get the chance to hear from him and learn from him. But more important than any of that, he is a wonderful human being.

Okay.

He's an author, an entrepreneur, and most of all a teacher. He's a best selling author and a speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he's written 19 bestselling books including the Dip Linchpin, Purple Cow. That's also his TED Talk, I Love It Tribes, and what to Do when it's yous Turn. His most recent book, this Is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries around the world. He's renowned, known for his writing and speaking. He's also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yo Yodine, which was acquired by Yahoo. I mean, he is in the Marketing hall of Fame. He might be the only person that is also inducted into the Marketing hall of Fame and Direct Marketing hall of Fame. Only three professionals have been reaching this level of success. He's unbelievable. He's such a great human being. And his new book, which is called the Practice Shipping Creative Work drops today. You've got to check it out. You've got to check him out. And the Practice is really what we're going to get into right now. So hold tight. We're going to be right back with my friend and your new teacher, the author of the Practice. We're back in one minute with Seth Godin. It's that time of year again.

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I ask you to try to find your passion.

Welcome back. I am so honored today to have the infamous, fabulous Seth Godin with me. Thank you Seth.

Well, thank you for having me. That's really kind of you. It's good to meet you and you're.

Already teaching me so much.

Just in the first couple of minutes.

Of meeting you I'm blown away. I wanted to talk today about your.

New book, the Practice and what is.

So serendipitous is My background, Seth, was in corporate America. I was a Chief Revenue Officer 25 plus years in that really linear world. And now I'm out on my own as an entrepreneur. And while I talk so much about confidence and the importance of just being you and owning your voice and taking chances, today happens to be one of those days where as an entrepreneur, I'm hitting roadblocks and getting frustrated and doubting myself and wondering why did I leave that well lit linear world to immerse myself in such challenges time and time again. And it just leads me to that message of the practice and shipping the work. So I was hoping you could share with us a little bit of your wisdom and impart it on me, because I need it today.

Okay, here we go.

I guess one of the things that.

I took away from the practice is the importance of finding your voice and owning your voice and how do people go about that? I had a really hard time finding.

My voice for, for years.

So because we are talking about things that we have been brainwashed on for our whole lives, we need to go several steps back because a whole bunch of things that we think are true might not be true. I'll begin with the phrase trust yourself. Or are you talking to yourself when we say that? Who is talking and who is listening? Who is trusting and who is being trusted? There's only one of us. Except there isn't one of us. There's more than one of us. There's the one, the voice of control, of compliance, the voice of the scold. The voice is trying for safety, that wants you to not speak up. The voice that makes you feel like an imposter, the voice of resistance. And then there's that other voice. And it's that other voice that is capable of generosity and insight and creativity. It's that other voice that can do something that might not work. And what we got brainwashed for 16 years in school was ignore that voice. There's going to be a test that voice is not. Welcome to come to the test. You're going to need to apply for a job. Hide that voice. And so when we say trust yourself, we're saying not that voice is always right because in fact, that voice is usually wrong. But we're saying if you're going to do the work, you have no choice but to trust that voice. You need to figure out how to let that voice make its point. And then your other voice, the loud one, will have plenty of time to undo it if it wants to. But for right now, finding your voice means what do you sound like when you sound like you? Not when you sound like an imitation of someone else. That there is a difference between being standard and being peculiar, being idiosyncratic. Because in a world where people have choices, they're not going to choose someone who's a slightly more expensive version of someone they can already get. They're going to pick somebody who is peculiar and worth choosing, worth following, worth seeking out. And that is the hard work of the practice.

It's really hard work because you made a great point where it's ingrained in us to be a certain way, to follow whatever that example of success.

I remember this so much in corporate America. Don't dress a certain way.

Don't speak up in a meeting if you didn't have the highest level title. There's all these rules that are conflicting and go against what you're thinking inside. And the more you follow along with.

It and hold it in, the smaller.

That voice gets and the harder it is to find.

That's right. Now, I don't know if you like foreign food, but if you've ever been to the International House of Pancakes, when you walk down that aisle to the restrooms in the back, there's a plaque that says Employee of the month. And you'll see that they give you a little tiny thing if you are the most compliant. That is not how you make an impact in corporate America or anywhere else. That the people who get the best parking spaces have the most leverage are able to make a difference aren't the ones who did everything they were told and simply outlasted everyone else. That was true 50 years ago. That's not what's true now. What's true now is people say we have no choice but to listen to Heather because she's figured something out that the rest of us haven't figured out yet. And what we're able to do is become leaders. And the thing is, if you want to be a leader, you have to deal with imposter syndrome. And a lot of people would love a formula to make imposter syndrome go away. That feeling that we don't amount to anything, that we're a fraud, that we're going to get caught. And I'm here to say the reason we feel like an imposter is that we are one. What it means to be a leader is to show up with an answer where there is no playbook. To show up, not to manage, but to say, I think over there is where we want to go. Well, of course you're an Imposter, because you've never been there. Of course you're an imposter because leading is telling the truth in advance when you have insufficient proof. And so when you feel that way, it's a symptom that you're onto something. Not that you're right, but that you're starting to model behavior that helps you get to where you need to go.

Imposter syndrome is alive and real, and it's happened to me countless times in my life and in my career. And I got some really good advice last month from one of my guests who said, in different parts of your life, you are the mentor. In different parts of your life, you're the mentee, and it's okay to show up as either one. And I like that idea of saying to myself, okay, the first time I wrote a book, oh, my gosh, am.

I allowed to be an author?

Is this even something that is legal? Instead of, you know, questioning myself so much with saying, I'm going to show up as a rookie mentee author and give it my best and trying to take some of that pressure off that we put on ourselves.

Right. And the purpose of the pressure is for the strict compliance voice to make the other voice be quiet. That's why we invent the pressure and we get hooked on the outcome because it gives that voice more leverage. So I can't tell you how many people who have been working on a book talk to me about how many will it sell and how do I get the right distribution? This is your first book. You're not going to sell that many. No matter what you do, you're almost certainly not going to make it a best seller no matter what you do. What would happen if you just wrote a book? What if you just wrote the book you wanted to write without regard for whether or not everyone was going to like it? What if you wrote a book for 10 people? What if you picked in your head who those 10 people were and created something that they couldn't forget? Wouldn't that be enough? Start there.

That is excellent advice. And it's actually, I shared my book with my innermost family, relatives right before I was going to launch, and they were saying, no way, don't do it. You're going to get sued, it's going to fail. You're going to be embarrassed. You've got to step away from this. Heather, wrap it up. You know, forget it. And I called my editor, Seth, and he said what you just said to me. He said, heather, did you write the book for your Family. I said, no, I did not. He said, who did you write the book for?

I said, for one person.

If there's one person out there that I could help that felt the way.

That I used to feel, then I'm.

Writing the book for that person. And he said, well, then that hasn't changed. And we launched the book, and it was the best advice. You could just help that one person.

It's a game changer.

Your family wasn't being evil. Your family thought they were being kind because their controlling voice was trying to protect you. And they were empathizing in the sense that they wouldn't publish something like that because they're afraid. So on your behalf, they were being afraid. And one of the key principles in the book is all criticism is not the same. And we have to differentiate between the criticism of a troll, the criticism of someone who cares about us but doesn't know better, and the criticism of the actual useful critic who can help us make it better. All of which, again, to remind everyone, there's no guarantee any of this is going to work, but all of it is going to work better than not doing this.

So how do you get yourself, or advise us to step into fear when there are all of these voices and all of these pressures and we've grown this certain way believing these certain things, and we recognize that in order to get where we want to go, we have to start taking the risk, we have to start taking the chance. But so many of us are paralyzed.

By that feeling of fear, right?

Well, it's super easy to get paralyzed because we've been pushed to believe that we need to appeal to everyone. And we need Albert Einstein quality breakthroughs. And the alternative is pick the smallest viable audience and seek the smallest viable breakthrough. Can you say just one thing that will make a difference to just 10 people? Because that's clearly not fatal. Start there. It matters a lot to those 10 people. Start there. And then once you realize it's not fatal, maybe you could do it again. Then maybe you could do it again. You know, if you're a fan of music from the 60s and 70s, it is possible to buy demo CDs that Billy Joel made, that Cosby, Stills and Nash made other people. They're all terrible. They're terrible because they don't sound like them. They're just getting started. But if they had listened to them when they came out and said, I'm out of tune, my lyrics are a little off, and my blah, blah, blah, we never would have heard of them. Instead they said, this is only for 10 people to hear. I'll try and then I'll make it better. And then I'll make it better. And then I'll make it better. Shipping creative work. That's the only way to make things better is to ship creative work.

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And I know you're huge into creativity again. When I go back to my corporate America world, I did not believe I was creative. I was somewhat, you know, told that if you're in a leadership role, it's more about discipline and structure and systems and process and let the creative, artistic graphic designers be creative. So when I started working on my own, I started brainstorming ideas and, you know, coming up with different things. I could write or, you know, launching a podcast, podcast. And someone had said to me, yeah, I mean, you've always been so creative. And I laughed. I said, you're crazy. No, I'm a leader. I'm not creative. And it took me maybe my first year as an entrepreneur to discover I'm unbelievably creative. And actually that's always been what's unique and so different about me versus other leaders in corporate America. I was disconnected from the idea of it, I didn't accept it. And I thought creativity was only for certain people.

Well, let's get the words right. Most people in corporate America are managers, not leaders. Managers have authority. Managers get people to do what they did yesterday. But faster and cheaper managers are held to account because they have power and authority. Leaders leadership is optional. It's optional to lead, it's optional to follow. That's what makes it leadership. So we need creativity from leaders and it is possible for a manager to act like a leader. But managers have authority and once you have authority, you just get to tell people what to do. And that's the way factories work.

That's a nice clarification, the difference between a manager and a leader. And it's very well said and completely accurate. And I've worked for a manager, I've worked for a leader and I will take a leader all day long.

Most people would rather work for a manager. Why? Because you know what they're going to do next. You're not going to get surprised by a good manager. Being a good manager is not an evil thing. Being a good manager is essential to. If you go to the supermarket and they're completely out of milk, that's a freak out moment. That almost never happens in the United States. How come? Because the people who manage the milk supply chain are not creative. They're really good managers. They understand that there's cows all the way over there and there's people all the way over here and we're not going to run out of milk. And the same thing is true for the people who manage the airline industry before the pandemic. Planes don't crash. They don't crash because of management, not because of leadership.

That's a very important point.

That we do want good managers running those different initiatives. I will agree with that.

But for the people that do want.

To start tapping into creativity, that do want to find creativity within themselves, how do they do that?

It begins by refusing to look for a guarantee. And this is the biggest challenge that I find people have. This is why the book is called the Practice. Because what it means to have a practice is that you show up tomorrow even if it didn't work today, because it probably isn't going to work today. And I was just reading an article about Sia, who had more billion viewed YouTube music videos than any other artist. And she said, look, I. I did the math, and what I saw is that one out of 10 songs maybe work. So instead of writing one song every three weeks, I write 10. Right. That doesn't mean she ships junk. It means she understands that it doesn't come with a promise of acceptance. It's simply the practice of doing it. And if it gets accepted, that's nice, but it's not related to the practice.

That's interesting. It's approaching music as if it's a sales game. Right? It's a numbers game to up the amount. But I wonder if that actually made her more creative and more. She kept putting herself in that flow and challenging herself.

Of course. I mean, I have a blog that comes out every day. It doesn't come out every day because I've written the perfect blog post. Comes out every day because it's tomorrow. Right? And once you know that there's gonna be a blog post tomorrow, then your subconscious works really hard to make it better because there's gonna be something. You might as well ship something good.

And you say that there's no such thing as a creative block. I need to tell you, as you know, we've had some chall in my family in the last month and lost some people and pets and had some tough times, and I've been finding it challenging to write. And I just feel like I don't really want to do it the way that I used to want to do it. So how do you tackle something like that?

I've been thinking of you and I'm sorry for all the speed bumps. So thank you so much.

You're so sweet.

Seth, what I'm about to say is not to diminish any of the trauma and tragedy. It's to say the following Writer's block disappears as soon as you call it. I don't have any perfect writing. Of course you don't have any perfect writing. Can you show me your bad writing? Can you show me your bad paintings? Can you show me your bad songs? Can you go write 10 bad songs even if you don't feel like it? Probably you can. Because it turns out writing bad songs or books or drawings isn't that hard. But if you start doing bad ones enough, a good one's going to slip through no matter how hard you try to keep it out. So there's no plumber's block. There's no walker's block, there's no talker's block. If you are physically lucky enough to be able to walk and talk, you're going to be able to walk and talk tomorrow. You don't get blocked. Well, the same thing is true with creativity. What's actually happening is people wait to be assured that it is going to be well received without criticism, that it's going to be a happy process, that it's going to work. No, you don't get any of those. Reassurance is futile. It's not relevant. The real question is, where's your bad writing? Where's your not very good work? Show me that and then talk to me about the fact that you're blocked.

It's interesting that you say reassurance is futile because we all grew up in these programs where reassurance is what you're after. That's the end goal. That's what you're told to do. Whether you're a child in school or.

You'Re on an athletic team or you're.

In business, you're told to seek reassurance.

Yeah. I mean, if they were honest with every kid who tried out for the basketball team in ninth grade, the honest thing to say is not one of you is going to be a professional basketball player to a rounding error of one in a million. It's true. Right. But they don't do that because we have persuaded people to buy into this cycle of that worked. That's going to work. That's going to work, Everything's going to be fine. And the problem is when you get hooked on that cycle, you need it to go back to your work. The alternative is to realize probably not going to work and I'm going to do it anyway because I'm doing it for 10 people, the smallest viable breakthrough. And even if I don't get those 10 people, I get a chance to do it again tomorrow. And that privilege that we have to not work in the iron mills, the privilege we have to just show up and say, here, I made this should not be wasted while we wait for reassurance.

When you look back on your career and all that you've accomplished, is that what you attribute your success to, was approaching it that way?

Well, I didn't for a long time. And it was wrecking me, really wrecking me. And then I was lucky enough to see that I was becoming attached to outcomes. And it undermines not just creativity, but salesmanship, our ability to get on stage and give a speech. So still to this day, if I'm on stage or in a zoom room giving a talk and it doesn't look like it's working, my throat will tighten up. I'll talk faster, I'll work harder at it. None of which have ever worked, and it ends up making my work worse. On the other hand, if I say, you know what, these people are in the wrong room and I'm only going to get to give this talk to this room one time. So why don't I just relax and give this talk the best way I know how. Because the outcome is pretty much assured is not going to be what we all hoped for. But I'm here. And if I can relax into that is that happened, it turns out it comes out better for them too. And that is how you save a gig. Not by willing people with the force of your mind to get the joke to like you, et cetera. Every single time a standup comic, a musician, a leader of any kind tries to do that, reverse engineering it, it all falls apart.

What about when outcomes are important like.

Financial and paying bills and generating income?

How.

How can we detach from them? It just seems so counterintuitive and frustrating to me.

Yeah, no, if you need to make a living, I don't think you should bring your most precious creative work to the table. I think that being a hack is a worthwhile endeavor to say I am here to extract from the audience cash in exchange for the value of my creating. They see value, they will pay me for it. I'm not showing up to be authentic. I'm not showing up to be transparent. I'm showing up to give them what they came for and I'll get paid for it. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't get confused when you're doing that. That you are also this authentic in quotes, artist in quotes who is following their calling in quotes. Because it's when you get confused that you become a diva and a prima donna. That showing up for people who need what you have is really valuable and it makes our market economy work. But when you're going to push the envelope, you've got to realize that it is entirely possible that in that pushing you won't have the home run that you're hoping for. Can't have it both ways.

That's very fair.

Seth, this is your 19th book?

Well, it's my 20th. But before that I was a book packager and I did 120 books. So you can count it any way you want.

Do you get as excited and or slash nervous now as you used to or is this just kind of par.

For the course for you?

I am more excited about this book than I have been in a bit because it is resonating with people. I didn't write it to resonate with people, but I'm thrilled that it is now that the book is written. All of it is about me pleasing the audience, not about changing the book, because I can't change the book. The nervous thing is interesting because the nervous thing is a form of fuel. What we know is that nobody gets nervous before they call their family down for dinner. But that same person might get nervous if they were on Top Chef or whatever show follows the pandemic, right? What's the difference? The difference is the story we tell ourselves about what's going to happen next. And if you find that that nervousness is useful fuel to get you to pay attention, to activate your adrenaline, et cetera, et cetera, I say go for it. If it's not useful fuel, we got to figure out how to tell ourselves a different story so that we get the fuel we want. So I used to get nervous before I pressed Publish on my blog. And there were two reasons for that. One, as soon as I pressed it, it went live. And two, if you hit reply, it went to my inbox. So I knew that every single time I pressed Publish, I was going to get between three and 10 angry emails from people who either didn't understand what I wrote or just wanted to clear something up. And so I was conditioning myself to dread to be nervous about blogging. So the two changes I made were, now I queue the blog post up so it goes live at 4:15 in the morning while I'm asleep. And two, the emails don't come to me. They go to an auto reply that say, I didn't read your email and I don't read them. And all of a sudden blogging doesn't make me nervous anymore. And I didn't need the fuel of being nervous to blog. And I blog better because I'm being generous, not nervous.

That is hysterical and brilliant. I mean, you've outsmarted the process. So I'm gonna have to apply that the next time that I start feeling.

Nervous, I'm gonna have to figure out.

What changes I can make to overcome that.

You also talk in the book about asking for permission.

And I again sign up for, I was big into this, you know, asking others what they think or asking if.

I should move forward with something.

How can you overcome that when that has become a habit in your life.

That'S been conditioned in you, right?

So what you're really asking for is reassurance, right?

But you're really asking for reassurance again.

If I do this and it works, I get the credit. And if it doesn't work, I get to blame you because you told me everything was going to be okay. Right? That's not a fair deal. And what I'm saying is, just because you're a creator doesn't mean you get to be selfish. Just because you're a creator doesn't mean you get to be right. What it means is you get to be generous. So the question is, are you doing this with someone who is enrolled in your journey, going where they said they wanted to go in a generous way? And you know, that's why walking up to someone in the bus station and insulting them, not helpful. Even if you're an insult comic, Even if you're, you know, the next Don Rickles, even if you're practicing, not allowed. Because they're in the bus station, they're not in a comedy club. And you're not doing it for them, you're doing it for you. And that distinction is key. So we all have permission to make things better for people around us who are on the same journey we're on. You don't need a new permission to do that. If you do something and it doesn't make things better, you need to apologize, learn from it, and do a new thing. But you don't get to insist that people do it your way just because you invented it, because the outcome doesn't come as part of the deal.

That's really eye opening to me because when you explained that, really asking for.

Permission is asking for that assurance and.

The potential to blame somebody if it doesn't work out, that is so accurate. And I was just running through in my mind how many times that I did that, but I was completely unaware until you just described it that way. And I think I'm pretty self aware. So it blows my mind just how much we're not aware of.

Right, well, you use that word self aware again. Aware of which self? Right. The self that wants you to be in the straight lines, invisible, safe, is really, really good at coming up with stories to trick us. The other self, the self that's cowering but wants to come out, the flower, the genius inside of us doesn't use words very well. And so in the debate between the one who's good at words and the one that's not the one who's good at words almost always wins. It's the one that can rationalize you eating a pint of ice cream before you go on a blind date. Right. Because it's just trying to get the other part of your brain to be quiet. And it knows that if you put enough fat and sugar in your system, it'll go into a coma, at least for a little while. And so it comes up with this whole articulated thing, well, I didn't eat breakfast, so I can eat this and it's vegan and it'll be fine. Wow, look at all those words we're good at using. And what I'm getting at is we can fuel that. We can feed that voice by arguing with it, by debating with it, by bringing up facts, or we can say, oh yeah, keep talking, go ahead, I'm just not listening. Keep going on and on and on and on about outcomes. I'm not listening because outcomes aren't why I did this. I did this to be generous. And you're not good at generous and you don't know how to talk like this about gender. So you just keep coming up with reasons why we're going to fail and why we don't have permission and why, why we need reassurance. Keep going. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm just going to make my work. I have a practice and I do my work regularly. I'm not waiting for the muse, I'm not waiting for a genie. I'm just going to do the work.

And does it become much easier as.

You continue to do the practice?

If we look at before the pandemic, how people went to the gym, the biggest month of the year for the gym is January. Lots of people join. Most people quit in February and by March, the people who are left are going to stick around for a while. Not because it's easier to go to the gym, but because it's normal to go to the gym. Because you start to identify as the person who goes to the gym. The same thing is true with the practice. When you say to somebody, I am a writer, that's different than saying I wrote something. How do you get to the point where you say I am a writer? The answer is you just keep writing things. If you keep writing things, sooner or later you are a writer. So our mutual friend Brian is a magician. He doesn't do magic tricks. He's a magician. What's the difference? Because he shows up and he does it even when he doesn't feel like it. He practices his one handed cuts even when he doesn't feel like it. He's a professional. He has a practice. That's the difference between him and someone who does magic tricks.

Meet a different guest each week.

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I asked you to try to find your passion.

So when you were explaining that it reminded me of I was fired three years ago and I had to change my LinkedIn profile. And it seemed like this overwhelming challenge. What will I what are you? Who are you? What do you put? So I just said, I'm not gonna put anything yet. I have to figure out what I am. And I remember I was working for myself for a few months. I was knee deep in the process of writing my book and creating an online video and doing a number of different things. And all of a sudden one day I heard myself say to someone else, oh yeah, I work for myself. And in that moment it wasn't anymore. I'm unemployed, I don't know what I'm going to be. I work for myself. And then it was I'm an entrepreneur and then a writer and a podcast. It keeps changing and evolving. But it wasn't something I was clear on right away. It took a little bit of time.

Right? Because identity is a scary thing. Seeing ourselves in the mirror, a scary thing. Mirrors are a fairly recent invention and they freaked people out for a long time. And, you know, just look at how much we spend on dog food and hair products. Right? Both of them are forms of mirrors. How will people think of me if they feed my dog cheap dog food? And what will people think of me if my hair is a mess? And these are all about hiding that other voice and not coming out with what we are capable of doing. And so what I keep coming back to is there is a practice. If we acknowledge that there is a practice and that it is imperfect and that it doesn't bring us results, it is simply a practice and that we can simply do it. That is the best way to ship creative work.

Part of that's got to be forgiving yourself on those days that you don't have a great day and not giving up on it, like you said, showing back up again the next day.

That's right. Forgiveness is a key part of this also is defining what a great day is. Right. If you go to the studio and make nothing of value, but you went to the studio and you did the practice, that might be just as great a day as the next day when you win a Pulitzer Prize, because you wouldn't have done the Pulitzer Prize winning work if you hadn't done the work the day before.

That's important to give ourselves that grace when we feel like in the moment, like the day that I was having today, as I mentioned, I was just butting my head against the wall saying I'm not getting any breakthroughs, is to say, who's to know if tomorrow isn't the day the breakthrough comes? And I wouldn't have gotten there had.

I not gone through this challenging day.

Right. But the answer is not to forgive ourselves by watching Netflix, not to forgive ourselves by doom scrolling. Not to forgive ourselves by getting caught in the media maelstrom. That's not a form of forgiveness. That's a form of hiding.

And these days it's very easy to hide with the amount of media and overwhelm that is out there.

Exactly correct. And so one of the riffs in the book, I tell the story of a lifeguard. And if you're a lifeguard at 18 years old, there's no chance you're the best lifeguard in the world. None. But if someone is drowning six feet in front of you, you're the one who's going to save them. If you want to apologize for the kid, for not being the best lifeguard in the world, Feel free. But the kid's still alive because you're a lifeguard and you showed up and saved them. And there are people who need our creative work. Maybe it's not life or death, but they still need our smallest viable breakthrough. They still need our insight. They still need our creative work. You're probably not the most qualified person on earth to do it. So what, you're here, you're on duty, you're on the deck. There's someone drowning. Now what are you going to do? And that ability that we have in this privileged world we live in, to connect to a billion people on earth, to find a way to make the culture better, I think it becomes an obligation.

It is an obligation. And people's voices are so needed.

One of the things, Seth, people ask.

Me all the time, Heather, I don't know how to self promote. I don't know how to put myself out there to get business. I don't know how to share my great ideas. They feel almost embarrassed doing it. How do you respond to people when they ask you that?

Well, we run the marketing seminar, which is probably the most effective and biggest of its kind. And it's 100 days of people wrestling with questions like that. We have to begin by acknowledging that your work's probably not that good and that maybe you're going to need to make it better. And number two is there's a difference between hustling and telling a true story. Hustling people is unattractive. Nobody wants to be hustled. No one wakes up in the morning saying, I wish someone would hustle me today. If you need to hustle to get work, you need to find a new line of work, because that's no way to live. The alternative is to tell a true story to the people who need to hear it. And if you tell the right story to the right person on the right day, and it's true, they're gonna beg you to buy from you, not the other way around. That's how you know you have found the right, smallest, viable audience. It's how you know you're actually doing something of value and of service. And you know, if there's a two foot snowstorm and your neighbor is 80 years old and you say, can I shovel your walk for $20? The neighbor doesn't say, ugh, they're hustling me. The neighbor's really grateful because it was worth $100 to have their walk shoveled. And they Trust you. And that combination of trust and competence means you weren't hustling anybody. You were giving a gift because you did a hundred dollars worth of shoveling for 20 bucks in order to do that. It's not about persuading yourself it's okay to hustle people. It's about being really smart about what you make and who you make it for and refusing to do work for anybody else. Because as soon as you take anything, then your model becomes, you can pick anyone and I'm anyone. And that's not a good motto.

And you talk about that in the practice too, right? Getting rid of the wrong clients, finding better clients.

Yeah, because better clients are the secret to all of this. Bad clients want cheap work that's deniable. Cheap work that's a commodity. Cheap work that's fast. Cheap work that's good enough. And you can find bad clients really easily. Just go to fiverr and be a dollar cheaper than anybody else. Right. If you want good clients, good clients want you to do better work. Good clients push you to challenge the status quo. Good clients pay on time. Good clients aren't focused on how cheap it is. They're focused on how good it is. You're not going to persuade your bad clients to become good clients. They're not like, there are lots of things that I buy, like, you know, rechargeable batteries for a phone. I'm a bad client. I want the cheapest one that works. I don't care that you made it out of sheepskin. Right. I want a commodity. So you got to do the work that attracts good clients, and you got to fire your bad clients so you have time to do the work that attracts good clients.

Firing the bad clients is key. And in creating that space for getting rid of negative energy, getting rid of undervaluing yourself, and getting rid of wasted time. I'm so for that. And watching that opportunity when you start realizing your value and what organically starts coming to you.

And once the clients know that you're willing to fire bad clients, some of them will stop behaving so badly.

People, we are teaching people how to treat us. And that example connects very readily with others when they see it. I totally agree with you.

But it puts us on the hook. And that's the third story in the book. Do you want to be on the hook? Most people in an industrial setting do not want to be on the hook because it's when you're on the hook that you get in trouble. But if you want to commit to the practice, it means, please put me on the hook. I am promising you this. Let me build this for you. That's scary, right? Frank Lloyd Wright was on the hook. Frank Lloyd Wright didn't say, tell me what kind of house you want and I'll draw it. He said, this is the house I made. Do you want to buy it? Those are two totally different ways to be an architect.

So if everybody's ready to be on the hook, how can they find the practice?

You can read some excerpts and stuff at Seth's blog, the Practice. And if you want to see our workshops there, to kimbo.com mostly I wrote the book for people to share it with other people, to start circles of support, to create community, a conspiracy of the practice. Because it's when we support each other in this work that we're able to do even better. So whether or not you buy my book doesn't matter. Whether you commit to the practice, that's my mission.

Seth, you are doing such amazing work and I'm so grateful for all the good you put out there to me, to everyone, and for being here today and means the world to me. Thank you.

Thank you, Heather. Be well. And hugs to everyone in your family.

Thank you so much.

Hold tight. We'll be right back.

I asked you to try to find your passion.

Welcome back. I am so glad you got to meet Seth.

I absolutely adore him.

He's amazing, brilliant.

You've got to check out his book. And I'm so grateful for what an amazing person he is. Okay, so couple of questions. Here we go. Long story, Covid. Schools closed. 90% of my business is in schools. Schools open, but budgets are all cut to the point. I am looking to sell a lot of stock. But in between all of this, I started an online platform. I get educational speakers to come and speak and I invite teachers along for free right now because there's no budgets. I love LinkedIn and would love to become an influencer. How can you help? I'm looking for direction. So the key is right now, just keep showing up, right? You've got a post, you've got to add value. How can you add value? What problem can you solve for people? And Another key on LinkedIn is just use three hashtags. You know you want to own the hacks that are working. Figure out someone in your space that's already ahead of you, that's an influencer and take a look at some of their hacks. What are they doing? That's what working. You don't always need to completely reinvent the business model. You can take what's working for some and make it your own. Just keep going. Okay. Hey, Heather, great post. Great profile. I'm looking for advice. I'm writing a book about forgiveness after losing my family to a drunk driver. Any advice on how to market my book? I know it will help thousands. Not sure how to do it. Much appreciated. Okay, first of all, it's so sad. My heart goes out to you. I cannot imagine and amazing that you're writing a book about forgiveness given that situation. So applaud you. So marketing a book. The free way to do it is social media. Creating content that adds value. Share your personal story. Stories sell, facts tell. So you always want to lead with your personal story. You want to add value and connect with others. Promoting a book on social media is all about giveaways, contests. People love that kind of stuff. Or for you, given this topic of bereavement, maybe there's some different groups that already exist that you could connect with that have thousands or millions of people engaged and then you can introduce them to the book through these groups. That's a great way to move your book and reach thousands or millions of people very quickly. Another way is through press and you can hire a PR team, or you can pitch yourself to different outlets, figuring out how you can add value to their audiences. There's companies that do this right. I use Scribe Media. They help me self publish and they also have a brief promotion division. Authors Unite is another company I just learned about that helps people to reach bestseller status. So really doing your homework in regards to who are these partners that are out there, which are the right partners for you? Leveraging your social media? Your email list. Maybe your company has a big email list asking for help from your network, your friends, people of your community that have rallied around you and have wanted to help before. Tapping into them now is definitely a great way. And for sure joining some groups around bereavement and introducing them to your book so that they help to introduce your book to their massive audience. That. That's definitely another way. And if resources aren't a problem, hire somebody to do this for you. It is a daunting task. I did it for myself, primarily alone, and I turned my whole house into a shipping department. And it can be, it can be a lot, a lot, a lot of work. Going on podcasts and telling your story is another. Figure out podcasts that really target people around loss and forgiveness. You want to make sure that your story, your message is relevant to the community that you're going towards. But podcasts have been a great way to reach an audience that is relevant to your message, where even you can help them. It's all about your message. It's all about that community and that target audience that you want to reach. And there are so many hacks out there. For me, I am not an expert in that arena. I have to hire or collaborate with people that are experts in how to get a book to bestseller status so it reaches more people, appears in more lists, and ultimately makes its way into more homes. So best of luck to you. Love the message that you're bringing to life and people need to hear it. So on the lowest level, you've got to post daily about this. Let people know about your mission, your purpose, and the problem that you're solving. So thank you so much for being here. I'm so grateful to Seth for being here today. And as always, I'm grateful to you. If you like the show, please post, share, rate and review. It helps so much. You can't imagine until next week. I'll be creating confidence and I know you will too. I decided to change that dynamic. I couldn't be more excited for what you're gonna hear. Start learning and growing. Inevitably, something will happen. No one succeeds alone.

You don't stop and look around once in a while. You could miss it.