254: The Practice—On Generosity, Peculiarity, and Showing Up with Seth Godin

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What's next? This is a question we're all having to ask and answer more frequently. I'm Jenny Blake, your host of the Pivot podcast and author of Pivot. The only move that matters is your next one.

For show notes from this episode, visit pivotmethod.com podcast if Change is the only constant, then let's get better at it. Here we go.

I am over the moon to bring you this episode with one of my favorite people, thinkers, friend tours and mentors, Seth Godin. Seth is such an inspiration to me. Not just for his daily blog posts, his podcast Akimbo, the courses that he teaches, all the many many talk about public original thinking, all the visionary books that he's published, reading really for who he is and how he shows up in the world. His book the Practice happens to be launching today, Tuesday, November 3rd, which is election Day here in the United States. I didn't want to publish this without at least acknowledging that, you know, I almost said happy Election Day. We don't know if we'll know the results of this day today or in a week or in a month. Half the country may be really happy, half maybe really pissed off. There's really nothing I can say other than my heart is with you. We are all in this together, as my friend Mike Robbins would say, and we can just acknowledge that this is a time of heightened energy, intensity.

And change. So as you navigate this day, if you're listening, I don't know if you'll be listening on the day of or you'll listen later in the week or the month. I just want to send you some love and say I'm right alongside you. We're in this together and I wish you peace on this day. I wish you just when we need it. We take deep breaths and self compassion for whatever roller coaster and some calm with that. I'm so excited by the way, as I often say that I feel so awkward on this podcast most of the time. Oh my gosh. This this interview definitely happened on a day where I was tired and run down and feeling 2020 to use it as an adjective. And nonetheless, I absolutely love so much of what Seth had to say. I'm getting over the fact that I felt super awkward, partly because I'm interviewing one of my heroes, and those are always my most awkward interviews. I had even waited till we were over 250 episodes in to have Seth on the show. But I just know you're gonna take so much from it, and I can't wait for you to listen with that, onto today's show.

Hello, my friends. Welcome back. Where do I even begin? To introduce today's guest. Seth Godin is a mensch, a man of such productivity and profound thinking. He is a friend, mentor, and friendor to so many, the least of which is me. Seth Godin, welcome to the show.

Oh, I miss you and it's good to have this excuse to talk. So thank you for having me and let's have a conversation. I think it's going to be fun.

I can't wait. And I miss you, too. I think I can speak for so many of us when I say you're kind of always with me, sitting on my shoulder somewhere. And I was thinking back to when we met. It was 2011. Life after college was just coming out, and Willie Jackson invited me to come give a talk at Domino Project when you were all working on that. And I legitimately thought that you would all think I was out of my mind. But the one thing I could share was that spreadsheet, which, you know now so many authors have used thanks to you. And it occurred to me that that is kind of an example of what you're talking about with the practice is take that thing that makes you peculiar, that you actually are afraid that the world is going to judge you for or think you're crazy and share that ship that. And I feel like since the day I met you and ever since, and with so many of your writing and podcasts and speaking and blog articles. That's the point. Be peculiar and publish.

Wow. What a great way to come at this. Yeah. And it gets harder. It doesn't always get easier, particularly living in fraught times, particularly when we want to fit in, not stand out, particularly when we might be a little nervous about what will happen next. And for you to say it so clearly and generously. Exactly. That's exactly it. Peculiar means not oddly weird. It comes from the Latin. It means private property, which means it's yours, yours and yours alone. And the idea that we can take what's ours and share it with generosity, that's what gets Me to do my work every day.

You mentioned fraught times. We were talking before we hit record, because here we are, we're recording in early September.

2020. You know, how's it been? And I happen to be. In fact, I didn't know when this would come up in the show, but this is my first time recording an interview in over two months because I'm like, crawling my way out of a dip, which I know is antithetical to the practice, which is like, get up and ship anyway, just get up and publish and do your practice. But I have found it quite challenging. I feel a lot of fatigue at this point in the year. And I'm wondering for you, have you noticed an impact on your thinking or your ability to keep shipping this year? How has that affected your practice? With everything going on?

Yeah, every day, why even bother having a practice? It protects us from the variation of our daily intent. It protects us from the good days and the bad days. Mostly the bad days. Because if we have a practice, then we commit to doing the practice. So no matter how slower sloggy a day is, I figure out how to brush my teeth twice even. And we can go further than that. We can develop the habit of doing the work even when we don't feel like it. Especially when we do, because it's doing the work that changes our mood, not the other way around. And, you know, when you and I connected a couple minutes ago, I could hear in your voice both fatigue and joy. And I think the joy comes from you're back at it, you're doing the work again. So don't hold that back. Go ahead and do the work before you feel like doing it. Because often, at least for me, what I discover is when I do the work, even when I don't feel like it, suddenly I feel like it.

That's very true. Thank you for the reflection as well. Because it's funny, if we're going back to pre hitting record, I was thinking, I'm doing an interview today. Like, I'm hot, I'm tired. It has nothing to do with you. And I'm like, and today is the day that I'm interviewing Seth, my dear friend and someone who I remember waiting. You have this thresh you set for podcasters. Like, wait till you get to 150 and then ask me. And I can say, I'm now in the two around 250. So I felt like, okay, it's a good time to have Seth on, but there's such a roller coaster. I'm feeling Such a roller coaster in my energy and motivation. And I love what you're saying, that it doesn't matter if you show up. And you're right, that I think it is also when you're doing part of the practice, that the joy arrives kind of in the moment. But I don't think it would happen the other way around. So it makes sense. But do you ever have days? I mean, you're so consistent, and I really admire that consistency. It's just not breaking the streak, right? I mean, how do you do it on the days where you. It's like the last thing you want to do is work. And maybe you even know that your body needs rest or recharging.

Right. So let me. Let me talk about the last one first.

Every single person in the world, unevenly distributed, but every person in the world has felt what's going on right now. And for people who have borne the brunt of racial injustice that's been going on for centuries, or who are now realizing, long overdue, that it needs to be paid attention to, it's particularly poignant. But for people who've been ill, for people who know people who've been ill, human beings, like most creatures, want to control the environment around us. And when the environment feels uncontrollable, when it feels like everyone else is also in a rut, which means there's no one to look to, to model the way forward, it can feel overwhelming. And denying it doesn't do us any favors. Denying the feeling simply prolongs the trauma. And that's why making connection, engaging with other people is useful and essential. But. And it's a very big but, sooner or later, we reset. We reset to living life under whatever circumstances we're living them under. 200 years ago, no one had electricity, but people managed to slog through a world with no electricity. If all the electricity in the world went out, the modern world would freak out for, I don't know, five years. And then we would forget what it was like to live in a world with electricity. So the same thing is going on here is that we still have so many of the magical privileges and benefits that we built or lucked into over time. But it's easy to avoid them because we're in mourning, and mourning is real and trauma is real. And then we get to say, and then what? And then what will we do with this one precious day? And then what will we do with the two hours we have today where we can do something? Because hiding until everything is perfect will mean we are hiding for a very long time. And for me, it's how can I make things just a little bit better for at least one person? And so that's what motivates me to show up a little. And, you know, in terms of my output, I have a buffer. And I think having a buffer is really smart. So I don't get up at 4 o' clock in the morning to write that day's blog post. I've been thinking about tomorrow's blog post and next week's blog post for a long time, and there's something there. So if I get run over by a truck, the blog post will continue. The. The streak will happen. And buffers are useful because they allow us to not work out of a position of panic and not always worry about being live. Instead, they let us realize we can build assets, we can expend assets, but we still have to chop the wood. We still have to do the work.

Yes. Chop wood, carry water. So you share the. In the book, I also, I love what you were just saying about how can you do something that helps someone, and that's the generosity of the practice. And I love your perspective, even on sales, that if you have something in you, if you have even a comment, a word of advice, sharing a story, and you withhold it from the world, that actually, that's, in a way, the selfish act is not sharing it because it isn't perfect.

Right. And you know, the times that you've shown up in my world, in my office and said, I've written something, I've created something, not once have you said, help me get better known. Help me sell more of these. What I've taken from you is, I think I have something to share. I think it will benefit people. What do you think? And that posture gets us out of the mindset of Hustle, because no one wakes up in the morning saying, I hope someone hustles me today. And if you can wake up in the morning saying, I have a key that might open a lock for someone, well, then you can't put the key back on your keychain. You got to figure out where the key fits.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you must get so many favors, like requests for various types of favors.

I just forward them to you.

Yeah, perfect. How about send them to the other Jenny Blake?

But I believe, like, the way I approach my work is that if the work is good enough, it will help someone. And when they're done reading the book or listening to a podcast episode, I don't need to say, hey, can you go, share this with a friend because they will naturally want to do that. So for me, I know you've done a lot over the years on word of mouth and guerrilla marketing, but to me, the ultimate success of anything at all is to build on your phrase here, I made this. It's that the reader or the listener says to their friend, here, I just heard this here. I just read this, and it helped me, and I hope it helps you. And so I guess I'm not even in the. I just don't even believe in asking for favors because.

I don't think it's necessary when something really works. Like, I didn't ask you to share the author spreadsheet. That was the last thing I thought was gonna happen, you know, but I just said, why is it so inefficient the way publishers. Why does every author have to reinvent the wheel? And you said, I agree here, make a few tweaks. And then now, I think I've told you this, Seth, but to this day, I'll go to a book launch party back when those could still happen in person, and I'll introduce myself. The author will have never met me. And they go, oh, you're Jenny Blake. Oh, we've been using your spreadsheet still years later. Yeah.

I want to just add a little bit of nuance to what you said because there's one piece tactically that will make things easier for people.

I think we both agree that the life insurance tactic of asking your customers to push your service to their brother in law and everybody else because it's good for you isn't working. And it's a hustle and we want to avoid it. But why does someone share the Jenny Blake author spreadsheet? Why does someone share your book? Why does someone share one of my blog posts? The answer is always the same. Because it helps them. It maybe it helps them by having their friends think that they're a generous person. Maybe it helps them by having their friends think they're a cutting edge discoverer of the new. Maybe it helps them because if lots of other people use Twitter, you'll have more followers on Twitter. There's something that drives people to share and we get to build that into what we make. And, you know, if we think about something like Marcel Duchamp, who stole some of his work, but in general was one of the most important breakthrough artists of the 20th century, how is it that this person whose output was really small is so well known? Well, the answer is because if you were even a Little bit of an art snob. And you discovered Marcel Duchamp, your status in the community went up if you introduced other people to his work. And so built into the work itself is the engine of its spread. And sometimes people who think that they are making good work beat themselves up because it doesn't spread. Well, the work might have been good, but the work didn't spread because they didn't make it so that the recipient would benefit from spreading it.

I'm scratching my head over here, processing. I wonder, I mean, there must be some impetus to share that people like to be helpful to other people as well.

Why do you want to be helpful to other people? Right. Maybe you want to be helpful to other people the same way someone who sends a thousand dollars anonymously to charity and doesn't tell anyone they did that is helpful to other people. But most of the time that's not what people do. Right. So if we look at the spreadsheet in question, I adore you. And I thought that it would make me feel good to share the spreadsheet. But I also knew that for all the authors who discovered the spreadsheet because I shared it, I would rise in their esteem. And all the people who received it on my blog, feeling like they got their day's value because it was there for free, who shared it with someone else, felt like their esteem would rise in the eyes of people they were sharing it with, not just because they were being anonymously helpful, but because they were taking a risk by interrupting somebody else. And in exchange for that risk, getting karma points.

Yes. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. Taking the risk. And I see what you mean. And especially now with so much content and information, there is a valuable role. I think people do like to feel valuable. Here. I sorted through everything and I found this for you.

Correct.

That could be the curator's mantra. So there's here I made this. And here I sorted through the mess and found this going. Going back to the practice. You mentioned having some buffer. I know you don't like to get too much into the nitty gritty tactics of how you do what you do, but are you willing to talk a little bit about, do you batch content and. Or do you batch days like Monday is for content creation for one of your courses. Tuesdays are for writing five blog posts for the week. How do you just set up your week in a way where you are so consistent and so, as you know.

Or I think you know, I haven't worn matching socks in 20 years.

No, I didn't know that?

Yes, because when Purple Cow came out, I wrote about little mismatch and how they built a $40 million business by selling socks that don't match the 12 year old girls. And to remind myself of what it means to be remarkable, every morning I put on two different socks and I haven't missed a day. And the thing is a, it makes it really challenging if I have a new person doing my laundry because they're flummoxed by the fact that none of the seem to match. But second.

That'S pretty much the entire extent of advanced planning that I do for a day.

What I do with my blog is commit to writing at least one blog post a day, but hopefully two or three. And they go in a queue. And the night before I read tomorrow's blog post, sometimes I'll change it completely, replace it with a new one. And sometimes I'll admire just how smart I was in writing that blog post. Who knows when? And it stays where it is and goes out in the queue. So after I am hit by lightning, my blog will continue because that's the magic of computers.

What about recording a podcast?

Yes. So then other rituals. I want to have a regime and a ritual. So I swim almost every single day. Because if you start negotiating about whether it's a good day to swim or not, then you're never going to swim again. And I do a podcast. I start thinking about it on Monday, and if I'm in the groove, I'll record it on Tuesday or Wednesday. But the last day to record it is Saturday. And some weeks I will do a couple because I am prone to viral infections and if I get one, I don't want to punish people. In terms of books, I only write a book when I have no choice. Writing a book stopped being what I did for a living a long time ago, and I reached so many more people with the blog post that there needs to be a really good reason for me to turn it into a book.

I was, I was going to ask you about that. Of how your next book chooses you in a way, exactly.

Everything you can to get rid of it. And if you can't get rid of it, well, then it's a book. And then my bad habit, which I'm not proud of, is that I live it in box zero. And what that means is that I, I have surrendered four hours a day of my life to the incoming. Not by my agenda, but by theirs. And that's not a good habit. And I'm begging people who are listening to this not to send me an email.

I will second that for Seth. And this is one of the questions that when I told a friend I was going to interview you, I said do you have any questions you want me to ask? She said please ask about email. So I email is something I have wrestled with for over 10 years. It's probably the one thing that creates the most low grade stress and micro guilt that I can't resolve. Like no amount of apps strategies mindset shifts even when I think to myself what would Seth do? Or what would Tim Ferriss do? What would Oprah do? I have not been able to crack this case. And you know you were just talking about if you can't change your outside environment AKA emails coming in which we have no control over, then the only thing we could do is change our mindset around it. And yet I'm having so much trouble just getting to that place. And I wonder for you with your four hour block because some amount of that is giving back as you talk about in the practice, some amount of it and it's a fine line constantly to gauge this but is important to you, you know, responding to people, interacting. What if the influx would double like you suddenly become, I don't even know twice as well known as you already even are. And it's eight hours of work that would only fit in four hours. Like how do you just grapple with that constant tension of these small incoming requests. I don't even know what to what else to call them. And some of them are really beautiful.

We can't ignore that they are. And I, I, I can solve your problem. I just don't think you want me to. But let me, let me try to to break it into pieces. First of all, I'm super lucky that I don't dig ditches for a living that I'm not exposed to toxic chemicals in my work. This is, you know, most people would call what I do a hobby. And so I'm not going to complain about the fact that part of my work is that I've answered 147,000 emails over the years. Because what I decided was if someone was going to take the time to send me a non anonymous bit of feedback by email, I would try my best to take the time to honor them by writing back. I don't write back in a verbose way. I don't write back always in a particularly original way. But it turns out that there are a lot of people who me writing back two words means something to them and I don't want to forget that I get to do this work as opposed to just doing it for myself, because there are people out there who want to hear from me. So with that said, it's work. And I've never shied away from doing work. Number two, because I have a limited attention span. The endorphin cycle of being poked and resolving it in a very short period of time is actually sort of pleasurable for me in the sense that a pigeon in a psychology experiment is pecking and getting a treat a regular basis. So I am aware that this is undisciplined and I probably could have written seven books if I hadn't answered my emails. But at some level, selfishly, in addition to generously, there's an endorphin cycle there that I am connected to. But what we have to accept about email, which I had first in 1976 and built the first email marketing company in the world, is that it's an open API. And what that means is anybody can connect into the system. And because it's an open API, it's going to become asymmetrical. You're going to get more in than you are going to create out. You don't have to play that game if you don't want to. So the easy way to solve your problem is for you to write an auto reply in your email box that that says, thanks for writing to me. I don't read these emails anymore. If you need to reach me, here are the five things you could reach me about and here's how to go about doing so. And that will eliminate between 80 and 90% of your incoming. You will miss it because some of the things that it is eliminating are giving you pleasure and you will miss that. And you then need to have something worth filling the void. And I know people, super productive artists, musicians, playwrights, who don't need the endorphin cycle. They just need the silence. And they're going to create something extraordinary as a result. And so I can't drop Patti Smith an email and expect that Patti Smith will write back to me, because Patti Smith is busy doing her poetry her way, not living on the Internet, my way. So if you want to do that, technically it's really easy. You will not lose the important friendships of your life. What will happen is you will get back to Dunbar's number of 150 people who know your secret email address. And in your case, probably 3,000 people will disappear. And I would find that a little sad. But at the other, on the other hand, it would give me a lot of free time.

Yeah, it is such an interesting tension or trade off. I can relate to what you're saying because there's something that pulls at my heartstrings too, that somebody read the work or did, you know, listened to the podcast. They took the time. How many podcasts do I listen to and love? And I never think to open my email client, find that podcaster's email address and send them a note, you know, so I, I, I really acknowledge, like how much effort it takes to do that or even someone who's inviting me on a podcast. Like, there's so much about it that I value tremendously and I'm so grateful.

And as you said. And then there's the other side of, or at least when we look at advice given to creatives, the other side is say no to everything. It, you know, block it all out, create silence, create time for deep work. And I guess that's the tension that we all need to decide because what I'm noticing nowadays, there's just so many more inboxes. You know, there's email, texts, I'm not even on social media, but messages might sneak in through LinkedIn or I don't even check Facebook, but they're there. And so the problem sort of compounds, I think if, if one is not clear on what's the goal every day, then it feels just like this ambiguous hovering thing.

Right. And what's the goal every day is involves putting ourselves on the hook, which is if you go to all this trouble, sever all these ties, create all this silence, well, then you better damn well make something great. And that's a big hook to put yourself on. Whereas it is possible to go home at the end of a nine hour day. Honey, what'd you do today? Well, I had four hours of meetings and I answered email for five hours, so at least I did what I was supposed to. You don't have to point out that you did something great because you just did your job. And there are many problems with the dark patterns of social media and doom scrolling and the media putting us in the middle of a maelstrom, but one of those problems is they have let us off the hook. You know, how could I be expected to do something important? The world is on fire. Well, the world has been on fire before. The difference is it didn't show up on your phone as breaking news. You just found out about it two days later.

Right.

I know. And then now that those little D dopamine hits of the infinite scroll and Refreshing the news. Refreshing now. I just checked out the Citizen app just to do it, just out of curiosity. And I never. I read Gavin de Becker's book the Gift of Fear. I think you've talked about it. I think you're aware I have not.

Because I don't fear as much of.

A gift, but go ahead anyway. Well, this is now going to be like a pointless ramble, but no, go, go, go. I noticed myself checking crime because I would get these alerts of crime, various crimes that were happening around where I live. And it was kind of an experiment in bravery for me because I used to tell myself, I can't sleep at night if I know this. And I. Ignorance is bliss. And so I was just doing this exercise in personal awareness. Can I know what's going on around me and not freak out and just handle it? But I noticed myself, first of all getting scared, of course, and then I could choose to uninstall the app at any point. But one day I was like, I wonder what's happening on Citizen? And then I was just thinking, this is ridiculous. Like, when in history could people just open an app and see every police blotter? I mean, maybe those people signing into a ham radio or I don't even know what kind of radio would get you the police station frequency. But now it's like this hobby that people can have. We're all hanging out at home and you're just looking around like, oh, here's all these crimes happening around me. It's like, is that what we want to fill our brain with? Our mind? Probably not, but. But it's so easy to get hooked in. And the apps are designed that way to hook you, not in the good way that you talk about being on the hook.

Right. So we need to go to the classic philosopher of our time, Monty Python, and talk about their extraordinary skit about the argument room. And I will talk to you as if you haven't seen it. So this guy walks into an office and says, I'm here for an argument. And she tells him how much it costs and says, go to room seven. And he goes into room seven and he has this unpleasant interaction with a guy that devolves into name calling. And then he realizes he was in the wrong room. He was just in the name calling room. He needed to go next door for an argument. And in the argument room, you pay your money and someone will argue with you. And the reason this skit is so relevant to our lives and why I watch it every few months is you get to decide if you want to go in the argument room. You get to decide if you want to go into the stressed out of my mind room. You get to decide if you want to go into the I'm filled with bathos room. You have to decide if you want to go to the sympathy room. All of them are a click away. And so I found myself a few months ago going to the the world is in really big trouble newsroom because I could feel my brain wanting a little of that. And so I stopped because self discipline is the best kind. And I don't, you know, there was withdrawal for a few days where I kept finding myself wanting to go do that, go to that room. And then I took the room away and now I'm not hooked on it anymore. So if you can get clear about what your practice is and the work you seek to make, just go to those rooms and realize that while the other rooms are available, you don't have to go there.

And I know part of what you do is immerse yourself in genre and thinkers and people that you admire. You don't unplug completely from all inputs everywhere. How do you discern what crosses that threshold of yes, I do want to dip into these rooms of these thinkers or this type of output.

You know, I've never. I've never understood people who are sort of trauma tourists.

Because there are certain things that I feel like once seen, they're very hard to unsee. But on the other hand, I am filled with a great deal of curiosity about systems and how they work. And you can't understand how they work unless you witness them or are part of them. So when I see something catching on, when I see people spending time with something, I will show up as a tourist, not as an active participant to say, oh, what is this? Like, why is this happening? And then once I can figure it out, it takes a lot of willpower to stop doing it. Because the reason these things are popular is that they suck people in. And.

It'S tricky. Fortunately, most people don't do what you or I do for a living, so you can avoid it altogether if you want. Like. So I don't think it makes sense to experiment with heroin just a little to see what it's like. But if you are doing work on morphine and withdrawal, it's going to be really hard to do your work without spending time with people who at least have engaged with this so that you can imagine why they did and what it felt like. And.

So I need to stay above it. And I don't always succeed at that. I will get sucked into it, and I will lose weeks or months of my time. But the discipline is figuring out how much you need to engage with to be able to make an educated guess and some assertions about what it's like.

So I have to ask, did you dip into TikTok tourism?

I saw my first TikTok yesterday.

Okay.

And what do you think I said?

There's a joke here. I get the joke immediately. I could see how this pattern, which is, I believe, about to become a dark pattern, but traditionally has not, can really hook people. I mean, it's just straight up sugar, straight up.

And it has music.

It's so crazy. I downloaded the app just to see exactly as you're saying, just to dip in and dip out. I knew that I wouldn't engage. Really. I would go on, and it'd be an hour later, and I was still, like, drooling, watching TikToks, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, it's exactly the cycle you just described. I had to take the app off, of course. I knew I would, but I see how it's like crack.

Yeah, exactly. And let's get back to where we started, which is we're all who are listening to this, lucky enough to work in the business of being indoors and playing with ideas, that we have the privilege of having resources and the ability to connect with other people. What are we going to do with it? What's it for? Who's it for? What change do we seek to make? And if you can't recommit to that, then you're just going to become a wandering generality, and the world is lining up trying to manipulate you and turn you into a customer and a product. And I really want to help people take ownership for the fact that they got a few minutes, hours, whatever, a day that isn't spoken for. And it's probably worth turning that into something generous.

What do you do? I find myself at a pivot point, if you will. Oh, yeah, this is the year of pivot, where I feel a little stuck. You know, this question of who's it for? How do you want to be generous, and who's it for? And even with Pivot it's. The book is so broad. It's for people in companies, it's for entrepreneurs, it's for everyone, and therefore, it can be for no one. Even my podcast, you know, you were around when I was talking about the other Pivot podcast. I have the other Jenny Blake and the Other pivot. And it kind of has been encouraging me to just think how to get more specific. And yet sometimes I feel stuck on that. I genuinely want to find or make the group smaller, and yet there's resistance. I'm not trying to take myself off the hook. I guess I just. I wonder, especially now in the pandemic, and you watch. I've been watching every celebrity start a podcast. Podcasts are going to have to become more specific, I think, in order to work, because.

There'S just gonna be so many that are general enough or similar enough that that's where I think it needs to go and have a hard time figuring that out. And I think I'm probably overthinking it. But I'm curious what advice you'd have for those of us in this position.

Oh, you're not overthinking it at all. You are absolutely correct. The there's only room for one Joe Rogan, and there's only room for one, all things considered. And there's only room for one this American life. You can't be the next one, because there already is one. Here's the trap. The trap is thinking that demographics and psychographics are related. And demographics used to be so important because it's all we had, women 33 to 37 years old who live in these zip codes. That's a demographic. And the beauty of demographics are that they were easily available and you could target things to people who matched that. Psychographics are a Persona, what we believe, what we dream of. So if I lined up all the insurance actuaries in America, only a few of them dream of being classical music composers. That is a psychographic. It's not a demographic. Your podcast has nothing to do with what people look like on the outside or what they write on their census form has everything to do with yearning. People who don't think they need to pivot, who don't think that there's something possible, should not listen to your podcast. It's not for them. Shoo them. Shun them, make them leave. Who's it left for? Right. How can you be more clear to your listeners and the people they know that this is for people just like X, where X is an attitude, a belief set, a yearning. And the more you can refine that, the more likely it is that the people who are listening will, A, get something out of it, and B, tell the others.

And then, here's my little gremlin. Thank you. It's very helpful. And I even love the word yearning sometimes when I think about being more targeted or specific. This might sound weird, but it's like the issue of privilege comes up and I think to myself, there's part of me that, okay, I want to talk to entrepreneurs in complete control over their time and work with joy and ease and as soon. And I'm all about teaching people systems to help create more joy and ease in their work and in their business. But there's a part of me that hesitates because I'm like, joy and ease are such privileges. It's like, oh, I don't know, I.

I kind of feel bad. There's so many people that I don't, I don't know, maybe Zorba the Greek, like you could find joy and ease anywhere. But it's like there's a part of me that I want to be very specific to people who have control over their time. And yet I always. It's hard to leave others behind in a way. I don't know.

So we should talk for at least two minutes about indoctrination. People have been indoctrinated in this country into accepting a system of caste in which people are judged by the color of their skin. Indoctrinated as privileged white people, indoctrinated as.

Non white people, blacks who are persuaded to not believe that they are entitled or that life of joy and ease is even possible. And indoctrination is endemic and it's everywhere you look and it happens over time. But it is a mistake to say that you have to have a high status role in society or a lot of money to seek out joy and ease. So I've spent a fair amount of time with people who make three to five dollars a day. And if you or I were making three or five dollars a day, we wouldn't know what to do with ourselves for months. It would take us to figure out what does that even mean. But the amount of joy and ease in that community isn't that different than the amount of joy and ease that you would find at a TED conference. At a TED conference, there are all these people who are highly wired with a short attention span, who are keeping score of everything on a nanosecond basis and are stressed out of their minds even though they have enough money in the bank to not even care. Right? But they do care because that's the game they've chosen to play. So it feels to me like showing up and saying, let's redefine how you are narrating the game you are playing so that you have more joy and more ease than you had yesterday. That is not related to privilege at all. That is related to the story we choose to tell ourselves, whether we can unindoctrinate ourselves and people around us, and whether we can accept, acknowledge, begrudgingly, see where we started, and then say, now what am I going to do about it? Now what am I going to do about it? That part is up to us.

Thank you. I appreciate you reflecting that. It's true. There is so much indoctrination and status quo and that's. I mean, that's a huge part of your body of work, is just giving people the reminder to break free, break away, be yourself, put your work out there, create a ruckus. You know, like all of that is just this constant reminder to. To stand up and be counted, as you would say.

It's worth also highlighting that industrialism and the marketing industrial complex has been on a tear for 100 years to make almost everyone feel inadequate, because making you feel inadequate is the single best way to sell you something.

That is so true.

If we look at social media, Twitter's full time job is to make you feel bad until you come back and check some more. And Facebook's entire business model is people are talking about you behind your back. Jenny, you want to hear what they're saying? That's the entire business model.

Right. Or they're having parties without you and you're not there.

Right.

Like, not that I care, but I mean, yeah. And Instagram people are more beautiful than you. Here, look.

So if that game isn't giving you joy, don't play that game.

Oh, I second that. So we're. We're almost at our time. I know you did over a hundred interviews for this is Marketing. And I'm just curious, what do you wish more podcasters asked you?

You know, there's. There's a wide spectrum of podcasters, and the ones who have been through the podcasting workshop are a little bit different and special to me. But the best podcasts are a conversation between two people who care about each other. They are not the crazed Larry King reading a list of questions about something he never even thought about until a minute before he got on the air.

I am lucky enough that I do almost entirely the good kind of conversations with people. And you write a book not because you want to sell books, because you and I both know that's a really silly plan. You write a book because you want to have a conversation and you want other people to have a conversation without you even being in the room. And what the practice demonstrated to me is that people really want to have a conversation about this. And I'm just so grateful for people like you who are open enough and excited enough to let me talk. So thank you for having me and for challenging my thinking because I got smarter just talking to you.

Oh, well, thank you so much, Seth. Thank you for being here. You got me to show up in so many ways. But first interview, bag in the saddle in a while.

And also I have to say I was kind of waiting of when I would reach out to, to have you on the show. And I feel like this is just perfect timing. And I want you to know that in reading the Practice to prepare for this, I've already been sending quotes, reading them out loud to my husband Michael, sending a page of my iPhone to a friend. So it's working. And I think what's so beautiful about it is exactly that, that it's, it is the practice. It's not the output, it's not the result. It's the practice of doing the work. And this is the book that was always there in your body of work. And just now here it is in a form that people can hold in their hands. And it's beautiful, it's helpful, it's motivating, it's inspiring. And I hope that everybody listening can go grab a coffee and better yet, a few for your friends.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Thank you as well for everything you do. Where can people learn more? Where do you want to send them?

If you go to Seth, go. What's it called? Start over. If you go to Seth's blog, the Practice, there you will be able to see all the treats and treasures that I'm putting together. Or you can, if there are any places where fine books are sold, this book will be there.

Yes. And Seth mentioned the podcasting workshop that's at Podcast Club.

And you can get all the show notes for this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast. Seth Godin, thank you for being who you are. Thank you. It's been so wonderful to talk. Thank you for being here.

Big, big hugs.

Biggest hugs. You too.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Pivot podcast. Make sure you don't miss an episode or my insider tips and templates by signing up for Pivot List, a curated twice monthly newsletter where I share the inside scoop on what I'm reading, watching, listening to and the latest tools I'm geeking out on. Sign up@pivotmethod.com pivotlist get show notes from this episode@pivotmethod.com podcast and connect with me on Twitter at ennyblake.

Remember, build first, then your courage will follow. Hasn't it always.