294: This is Strategy: Think Bigger, Act Bolder, and Make Your Impact with Seth Godin

You said people, if they're not buying from you, something is wrong. Well, actually, someone who doesn't buy from you is doing exactly the right thing for them. Our job is to create the conditions for them to decide that the right thing for them is to buy from you.

Hello everyone, this is Kathy Caprino and welcome to my podcast, Finding Brave. I've created the show for everyone who longs to create something bold and brave in their life. To rise up, speak up, and stand up for who they are and to reach their highest and biggest visions. Each week I'll be speaking with inspiring guests from all walks of business, leadership, entertainment, the creative arts and the entrepreneurial world and they'll be sharing their intimate stories of Finding Brave and offer their best strategies for building your most rewarding, joyful and meaningful life, business and career. Hey folks, is it finally time to make a big change in your career but you just can't figure out how to do it? It's time for help and time to invest in yourself and finally understand and shift what hasn't been working for you. Join me as I coach and guide you through powerful, proven steps that will unlock your fullest and happiest potential. I've worked with thousands of professionals across six continents and the results have been transformative for them for a limited time. Also take advantage of my 10% discount for you. My amazing finding brave listeners save 10% off my one on one succession career and leadership breakthrough program and my most powerful you video training course that helps you close the seven most damaging power and confidence gaps that are in the way of your ultimate success and happiness. You can work with me in both of these programs for the comfort of your own home, at your own pace. Now's the time. Don't wait. Build the career you're ready for. Check out the show notes below for details and I can't wait to support you. I am so thrilled to share our guest with you today, Seth Godin. He is such an inspiration to me and I want to tell you a little bit about him. If you don't know. Renowned author, entrepreneur and marketing expert, Seth Godin is known for his transformation formative ideas in business and leadership with 22 best selling books translated into 39 languages including his breakthrough books Unleashing the Idea Virus, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow Tribes. This is Marketing and More. Seth has inspired millions to rethink how they approach marketing, creativity, leadership and work. His blog called Seth's Blog is one of the most popular in the world and delivers daily insights on everything from innovation to personal growth his new book, this is Strategy, is out this month and in it he offers a key guide to thinking strategically in a complex, ever changing world. I have found this book to be truly transformative for me and I know you will love hearing Seth talk about it. Enjoy the show. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Finding Brave. I say this very frequently, but I have to say it again. I'm really pinching myself. I'm kind of levitating to have our amazing guest, Seth Godin with us today. Seth, thank you for taking the time in the middle of your amazing book launch.

What a treat. I'm delighted to connect with you. Thank you for having.

Thank you, my dear. And you know, people, you've just heard Seth's bio. It's. It's mind boggling. I. I read that you also. Among your million accolades, is it something like 600,000 daily visitors to your blog, to Seth's blog, is it something like that?

Well, I try not to count, but the subscribers is over a million. The visitors is less because Google doesn't like blogs anymore and so people get it home delivery. They don't stop by the site.

I see, I see. So the analytics are a little different. Well, whatever it is, you're making an enormous impact. And you know, I want to tell everybody, I know the generosity you have, Seth as well, because you took the time to write a little blurb from my book back in 2020, the most powerful you. So I'm so grateful for that. I have it right here. I look at it regularly. But we are here to talk about your new book. This is Strateg and I want to tell you I poured over it, I read it, I listened to your podcast where you, you know, had part of your audiobook. And I want to start with a quote that from the book that really struck me and I want to know why you wrote this now after your 22 best selling books. This quote hit me. Strategy involves anticipating and planning for the actions and reactions of other actors within the system. This means considering not only the direct effects of strategic choices, but also the indirect effects that come from the responses of competitors, customers and even the environment. The success of a strategy is contingent not only on your actions, but also the actions of others. And then this successful people figure out how to trade their time and their effort for the change they seek to make in the world. Okay, I gotta go deep for a second. And I prepped you after I read your material. Seth, I hope this comes as a compliment to you. It is so obvious what you share, but it was hidden from sight before I read it. And. And I literally could cry a little bit. I do on my podcast. And. And I. I will let you talk. I promise. But one thing I want people to understand. I feel like this is a book for life, for our lives, not just for business. And what I was thinking prepping for this is I could cry, because I wish I had read this when I was 22, when I. When I ended up getting into marketing. And truly, I really wanted to be an editor and help people birth their books, But I was good at writing. So let us start with why did you write this book? Now, the 23rd book, I guess. Why did you see such a gaping hole that. What's the biggest thing that's missing? That was a big, long question.

Well, indoctrination is real. The system defends itself. It builds a culture to defend itself. And from a very young age, we are brainwashed into believing a few things. That our job is to do our job. That we spend 12 or more years in school where every question they ask us, they already know the answer. That we get rewarded for sitting quietly in straight rows and doing what we're told and hoping to get picked. So strategy is stripped away. There is no strategy. There's just compliance. And then when people who want to make a difference show up to lead or to start something, we're so pushed to follow the rule book, to look for the shortcuts, to get the tldr, because we don't have time to find the right path, that we've changed the word strategy into the word tactics, which are totally different things. And people. Friends would come to me for advice. Nonprofits, leaders, and they think they have a marketing problem. I say, you don't have a marketing problem. You have a strategy problem. And it doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction. So we need to pause in this moment of change, the biggest change of our lives, and say, yeah, but what's worth doing tomorrow? Not just repeating what we did yesterday and holding on for dear life? And I think this is one version of bravery, is to claim agency and responsibility.

My gosh. All right, I'm going to. I'm going to ask you the questions. I wish if you were sitting here, you know, having dinner with you.

I am sitting here.

No. All right. The thing that makes me stop in my tracks reading this book is that, number one. So I've been doing this business, my small little business. You know, I have two people supporting me now that it used to be four. It's really more like a practice, to be honest with you. But here's my question to you. I thought I had a strategy and then I read your, your statement. Correct me if I get it wrong. Come up with the most affordable, viable way to make the change you want to make. Well, here's my question to you. Are you seeing what I feel? Of course you are. Every single day that the whole way I have made money has changed so dramatically from the way you make money writing. From the way what? The whole thing. I think what in reading your book, I recognize is I have bloodied my head against the wall of what was. And I think that you talk about. We got to get into it. There are four threads of strategy. And the one that hit me, gave me a black eye, was empathy. And here I am, a former therapist, I think I have a lot of empathy. Where I didn't have empathy is you can't, as you say, insist that people buy from you. If they're not buying from you. You're going to tell us there's many things wrong. But I think I have thought about myself, how to keep doing what I was doing and making it work. I'm going to stop talking. Tell me what you think. I know the book talks all about this.

Well, that there's some brilliant insights in what you just said. I would disagree with where you started. You said, I just have this small little business. If you change one person today, it's not small to them.

And scale refrain. Thank you for that.

Scale is in the eye of the beholder. Right. None of us are ever going to be as big as Amazon, but that doesn't mean we're not doing something worthwhile. So we don't have to denigrate that.

Thank you.

So having empathy for yourself I think is important. But the next part is you said people, if they're not buying from you, something is wrong. Well, actually, someone who doesn't buy from you is doing exactly the right thing for them. Our job is to create the conditions for them to decide that the right thing for them is to buy from you. So if you are somebody who, I don't know, writes for a living and Claude AI shows up and chat, GPT shows up and it can write almost as good as you for fast and for free. I don't care how hard and loud you argue, most people are going to say, that's good enough for me. That's what I needed. The same way there's Heinz ketchup and then there's ketchup that costs twice as much. Most people don't want a luxury ketchup. Regular catch up is fine. So if all you offer is regular writing to regular clients, in the old days they needed it because they didn't have a lot of choices. But over time, the change agent, in this case AI, is going to transform that. So either you're going to work for AI or AI is going to work for you.

Do you find in, in the consulting that you do or training or speaking that in the world that is changing, there are some individuals or systems or organizations that actually don't have the chops to address what is happening in front of them? Or do you believe that anyone, any business, can come up with the right system with the right thinking?

Both. So I don't do any consulting. That's why I'm able to share challenging ideas, because I don't have to worry about clients.

Wait, what? Can I understand what you mean?

You mean if you go out on an edge and talk about things that confront what people stand for, they're less likely to hire you to be a consultant. So you have to always keep in the back of your head, is this going to cost me clients? I don't have any clients, so I don't have to worry about it. The thing is, I spoke in 2001 to the newspaper publishers of America, and I explained to them in detail how newspapers were going to disappear. Craigslist was replacing classifieds, and many newspapers classified for 105% of their profit, which means without classifieds, they're losing money every day. And there was no nothing to debate. It was clearly going to happen. And the newspapers had everything they needed to become, whether it was, you know, BuzzFeed or Substack or, you know, the New York Times could have 5,000 blogs and they didn't do any of those things because they didn't want to. Yeah, because the system is invisible and powerful. The system wants to defend itself. Nobody in a system is the system, but they're all part of the system. So I'll give you two system examples.

Thank you.

How much should a wedding cost? And the answer is exactly what your best friend spent, but a little bit more. And that's because the wedding industrial complex built that system. Right. That the system of healthcare in the United States doesn't make health, it makes treatments. So it doesn't matter how much a nurse or a doctor or an admin wants to make health, all the pressure is on them to make treatments because that is what is measured. That is what is rewarded? So if we see the system and then you show up and say, I have an idea about how you could make health, any individual might say that's great, but the system will push back against you because it wants to maintain itself.

Can I give you example of how I hear this? And I'll probably lose clients. I've always found it a little challenging when a company hires me to coach their person because really they want me to fix their person. Their person doesn't need fixing, their system needs fixed. It's exactly that. I live it a lot. So only if this system is very evolved and understands that it's only as good as the people who can thrive in it. Well, you would say there's needs a lot more than that.

Well, it's what does the system want? And the way it gets what it wants can change. So in September, the British government, the, the, what's that company called, England, shut down its last coal plant after 147 years.

Wow.

They invented coal plants and now they have none. This is fantastic news. The thing is the people who buy power don't want coal power, they just want cheap power. So as soon as you create a cheaper version of power, people will walk away from coal happily. Because the system doesn't want coal, it wants power. And so we can look at a corporation and they may have decided the way we make a profit is by oppressing our workers, dumping stuff in the river and making a shoddy product. If they discover a different path to making a product profit that helps them do that, they'll switch because they don't want to oppress workers. They're just doing it because that's the method of getting what they want. The system knows what it wants, but the way it gets it can change.

I get it. So there, back to your amazing book. You know, I took 10 pages of notes and any one of them I could go down a. I don't want to say rabbit hole. That's not positive.

I think rabbit holes are great. But I've never been in one, so.

You've never been in one.

You put me with a little rabbit droppings and it' dark in there and there's mud.

Well, I see what you mean. Proverbially, you've never. Yes, but there are so many concepts here. And I took notes on, you know, 10 of them that spoke to me. One of them was these. The threads, the four threads. Time games, empathy systems. I know this is hard for you, but if you could say before I ask this, Seth, I did Prep you on this. I'd love to know if in your childhood and everyone you know, I'm a former therapist. I. I think we are what our childhood taught us to be. Unless we unlearned it. And that can be good or bad. And I don't mean your schooling. I mean as a little child, did you see things differently?

So I'm a superhero person. Mostly dc, a little bit of Marvel. Every superhero has an origin story. Superman left Krypton. Spider man got bit by a radioactive spider. I could go on and on. Yes, lots of things happen to superheroes, but only one of them becomes their origin story because they keep repeating it to themselves. And this is the key. What story do you tell yourself about who you are based on what happened to you a long time ago? So if you had the misfortune of growing up surrounded by bullies or in an abusive household, when something triggers that, you're saying, here we go again. Because that's the story. But your sibling who may have grown up in the same home may be rehearsing a different story. So the story I rehearsed for a long time about my childhood was I was the clever kid who saw things differently than other people from a very young age. But I also did lots of things just like everybody else. But I didn't rehearse that story. So I think we have the chance to change the story we're rehearsing and not focus on the thing that not getting us what we want, but focusing on a different origin story that could help us get what we want.

I see how you deflect and don't talk about. I love it. And I have an origin story that is everywhere that I have used, you know, that I couldn't speak up to my Greek, beautiful Greek mom who's in heaven. Well, okay. But there were a lot of other amazing things that happened. But that one propelled me to speak up finally, but just to hit it home again, because I'm fascinated. You did see things differently, correct?

Yeah, but that was a choice. I think that everyone does. I spent a lot of time with kids. I used to run a summer camp. This was my 43rd summer up north. And I'm sort of a four year old whisperer. If you spend time with four year olds, you realize every four year old sees things differently. And then it gets drummed out of us. But kids can hold on to it and they usually do. They're just quiet about it.

Oh, that's beautiful. Thank you. And did finally. Then we'll get back to the book. Did you? I again, I was thinking about my own life, that I wish I had your book. But I remember my ex husband, now we're dear friends, said back then, you don't read a marketing book. You've never read a marketing book. And I said, I don't care about marketing. And I realized I care about marketing, but it's when I'm promoting and marketing something, I care about my own stuff that I feel helps people. Were you always drawn to marketing and helping businesses and processes and thinking about branding? Hyatt vs I just watched a video about that. Yeah, yeah, Nike. Were you.

I've never. I've never been drawn to it. It's just what I do. So the what I do is I make change. I'm a teacher, okay. And I could just as easily be teaching something different. The beauty of this field, which I helped invent, is marketing used to be advertising and hype and hustle. And then in 1995, it stopped being.

That because you said it needed to, not me.

I didn't do it. But the Internet showed up. TV went away. That, like, you know, if you read the Guerrilla Marketing Handbook, which I wrote with Jay Levinson, it's all about, you know, door flyers and cable TV ads and things that today don't matter one bit because the whole world changed. And now everyone is a marketer because you have an Instagram or you have a website or whatever that's brand new. So I got to show up in a space where there were a lot of attention and interest. I like to help people tell a positive story and make positive change happen. But this was the place to do it. And so I'm fascinated by it, but I'm not fascinated at all by baseball. I think if I had lived 30 years earlier, I could just as easily have been a baseball person helping general managers figure out Moneyball. But because that was a. A place of change then, and when we see a system undergoing change, that is our opportunity to make a difference. Because when it's undergoing change, the deck is reshuffled and you can have more leverage.

This is so fascinating. I have 4,000 more questions. Stick. Stick to the agenda, Kathy. All right, so let's talk about three things that, that emerged for me. Let's hope that's helpful. You said transformation happens when, and you, you gave a list of when. But one thing you said, and it's so darn simple. Find three to four people and take your book Meet weekly. And I think you said one key thing about writing this book was talk. People talk. About strategy. Don't talk about tactics. I so love this. But. But I realized I'm not doing that. And part of that is because again, it's the stories we tell ourselves. Oh, I'm not going to find people that really understand. Really, Kathy, come on.

You're afraid. Everyone's afraid.

It's fear. You talk about that. Affiliation, status and freedom of fear. This is what we want. But can we go back to this idea? If it's. If you feel it's important to talk about why it's so transformative to get three people together and make weekly and talk about your. Why does that transform us?

Because you have to say it out loud. People who are successful are often have an intuitive strategy. Like I know fashion designers and musicians and they're like, I know it when I see it. I'm friends with a guy who's a very famous record mogul. He's had a lot of hit records. And I said to him, how do you know if it's going to be hit record? What's the secret to a record? And he said, because it's a great song. And I said, well, how do you know if it's a great song? He said, because it's a hit record. Like he has no strategy, he just intuitive.

But it works for him and he can't teach that.

It works for now, but as soon as the industry shifted and it just did, right, with streaming and rap and TikTok.

Here we go.

You know, he can't, he's not succeeding at it anymore because he doesn't know how to talk about it. So he can't see how the change is going to change things for him. And when you get together with two or three other people, what they say back to you sort of helps. But you saying it out loud is the key. Being able to describe to people the change I seek to make is this. The people I'm seeking to change believe this. And these are exactly who they are. It either holds water or doesn't.

Can I ask you to repeat what you just said? Oh, how did you put it?

Okay.

Is it that? If you don't see, what is it? Say that again.

So a friend of mine owns some well known restaurants and everyone who goes to one of these restaurants had lunch before they went. It's dinner time. They have food in their fridge at home. They're not going to this restaurant because they need food, they're going for something else. And misguided, intuitive restaurants say, if I just make better food, we'll be fine. And he figured out, no, what I sell is hospitality and status and affiliation and recognition. So we're going to do that on purpose and we're going to train for that and we're going to talk about that. And for people who don't want that, they should go to a different restaurant.

Go to that one. Yeah.

And it was very interesting because he did an experiment where they got rid of tipping. Tipping is misogynistic and racist and unfair. Unevenly distributes revenue. It's a problem. So you get rid of tipping, you just raise the price enough to cover it. Everyone comes out ahead. His customers didn't like it? No. And the reason his customers didn't like it is because part of tipping is a earning status with the server if you're regular, believing that you're going to get better service because they know you're a big tipper. And two, earning status with the people you're taking out for dinner because they can see you're a big tipper. If you take that away from people, you're taking away one of the things they went out to dinner to buy status, which is that feeling. So if you say this out loud, you could deal with it, but if you don't say it out loud, you're more likely to make an error.

Well, who should be saying that out loud? The customer. Like in the research, in the internal team.

Right.

So did they know that? It wouldn't even occur to me. Well, I don't go to high end restaurants too often, but so the, the.

Way around it would be to make a different kind of story about the fact that you have no tipping. Right. So you get there and there's a little card on the table perhaps that says, because you care, this is a zero percent tipping restaurant because you, you, because you decided to come here, we are able to treat our employees a certain way. So now my status goes up. When my guests see that I picked a restaurant that's doing that, that's, gosh, it's brilliant.

So if I said, you know, I think my research shows people are coming to me as a coach and I will do research on this, but it's how I make them feel, probably for sure, that there's empathy, that there's reframing. Just like you framed my thing, my business isn't some small little thing, what would you say to a business that, okay, that's why people come to you. There's a million career coaches. Now here's what you have to do. What would you say?

So my free advice to you would be. I'm going to assert, you don't lose clients. You're good at what you do. They stick around.

That's true.

But you don't get enough new clients.

That's 100% true.

And the reason you'll get new clients is the paradox of coaching, which is everyone who has a coach has coach. Everyone who doesn't have a coach doesn't think they need a coach. So the only way to get new clients is either get someone to give up a coach they already have or persuade someone who doesn't have a coach to go get a coach. Right?

Correct.

Both Those are really hard to do. So the solution is, how do you create the conditions for your existing clients to raise their status? By persuading their friends to get a coach. Because if that happens, they're grateful. And now you have more clients. And you know who was great at this? Alcoholics Anonymous. This is why you have heard of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not Anonymous at all. There's no one we know of who's actually in charge. There's no ad campaign. But the first rule of Alcoholics Anonymous is you always talk about Alcoholics Anonymous. That the way you move up in the status hierarchy is you find someone who needs Alcoholics Anonymous and you bring them. Right. The evangelical part of it is the engine of their growth. So coaches don't understand this, so they think, I just got to be a better coach. But that's great. But you're not getting any new clients.

If you do that, genius. Of course you are. See, it's so obvious. That's another piece, folks, if you're wondering. You're like a prophet, in my opinion, because you see things. I know you don't like it. You're humble. Yes, I. I don't mean it that way. What I mean is you see what is coming and you state it, and there is so much resistance. There is so much resistance about seeing what the truth is in front of you. Would you agree with that?

Well, the book has 450 questions in it, maybe 500. If you ask yourself the questions. If you ask your friend the questions, you'll come to the same conclusions or better conclusions than I did. But you're not asking the questions.

So I think there's a little denial in there, too. Seth.

Of course.

You know, I think that it might take 10 readings of this, of a question like, come on, Kathy, be honest.

It's hard to stay in denial if you keep asking the question, right? So, you know, in my work on climate, if you take a hard look at the coast of Chile and see the fast fashion on the beach. If you take a look at the millions of people who are about to become climate refugees.

If you.

If you look, if you don't turn your eyes away, it's much harder to be in denial. Right? And so what I'm trying to encourage people to do is look at it.

I love it. There's so many questions I could go for with you, and I do love the four threads, but I know this is hard. But for anyone listening who is on the fence about should I read this book or listen to you every day, what do you think is, in your mind, the most instrumental question or idea from this book that other people just would be like, what? What happened? This is a shock.

I think if you're on the fence, you shouldn't read the book. I don't need you to read the book. Someone around you will read the book and they'll talk to you about it.

Okay, See, you're so. You listen to my every word and you answer it literally. Let me rephrase, Seth. I don't care about people reading the book. Okay. What was the most insightful for you in drafting that? How about.

Okay, so I think you've brought it up a couple times. So it's worth highlighting four threads, systems. We've talked about those. The invisible forces that make things the way they are. Empathy, which is other people have agency and a choice. Games, because it's serious. But it's not about us. It's about the moves we make. I move this way, they move that way. I do this, they do that. If you make a wrong move, you're not a bad person. You just made a wrong move. And the last one is time. Everyone's going to get tomorrow. They deal out tomorrow to every single person, evenly, every day. So you get to invest time that you know. Kathy, your work online and with your podcast. When you started, I'm guessing you had fewer than 20 people listening the first week.

Yes.

Now you have countless numbers of people. What happened? Did you change? No. Over time, you built something that connected and stuck with more and more people. So the goal is not how can I succeed tomorrow? It's how do I use time as a tool to plant the right seeds in the right soil so that when I fertilize them and water them over time, I'll have a forest when I need it. And so when we see those four things, suddenly the urgency of today's whatever is not nearly as important as understanding what Gift are we going to give our future self in the work we do today?

What gift are we going to give ourselves, not other people?

Well, you did something three years ago that you're glad you did.

That's right.

Kathy of three years ago gave you a gift. Wow.

Boy, do I love it. I want to end with you chatting about, where is it? It's something about what is the change I want to make. Yeah, tomorrow and what must I do today to further that change? You said it's so much better than that. Can you can talk about that for two minutes?

So if you're not trying to make a change, why are you wasting my time? Why are you wasting anyone's time? Don't interrupt. People don't have a business if all you're doing is yesterday's work over and over again. You have a job. And there's nothing wrong with the job. But if you have a posture of I'm here to make a change happen, let's be very clear about what that change is. I want to turn that person who isn't my client yet into somebody who is glad they hired me as a coach because they're accomplishing X, Y or Z. I want to turn this beach from something that's polluted into something that's clean. There's a change you can make. Okay. To get from here to there, we have to create the conditions for a resilient system to be born. We have to invest today so that we have more resources tomorrow to so we can invest the day after that so that over time it gets us to where we want to go, as opposed to saying, I'm going to pay a nickel and get what I want right now because those transactions are hard to find.

I know you don't care if people read it, but I hope my finding brave friends you do. Because again, I would say this since you're. You're opening the door for me to be incredibly honest. Whether you give up about business or leadership, I don't think that's what's going to drive people to find amazing value in this book. It's. It's a book for life about what? What are we doing on this planet at this time and when we're 90, looking back, which is what I say constantly, what do you want to have done? And if you're not doing it now, you're going to have regrets and that's a horrible place to be.

Beautiful.

Thank you so much for joining. Now, everyone, you're everywhere, but let's just hit it home. Where do people buy the book? Where would you most like them to go? Right.

So I, I have 9, 000 posts at Seth's blog. And if you go to Seth's blog, TIS, which stands for this is Strategy. There's videos, there's links, there's everything you need to know about the book.

I can't thank you enough. I really feel so energized. I feel it's time get going, Kathy. Get over yourself. And I know that that's going to translate into the coaching work I do. Thank you, Seth, for that brilliant mind you had at age four that you looked at things differently and that you honored that. I hope you'll come back again.

Thanks, Kathy. Keep making a ruckus. It matters.

Thank you, my dear. Hey, friends. Kathy here. Before you go, I wanted to make sure to invite you to join me on my next free career coaching call in my monthly series, Ask Coach Coach Kathy. In this program, registrants are invited to come on the 45 minute live Zoom call and share their most pressing career challenge or problem that they want help with. And I will give you my very best advice right there on the call for free. No question is too large or too small and it can be about any type of professional issue you're having. I'd love to help you. It's time to get some outside support and move forward fast. Just sign up@kathy caprino.com Ask Coach Hyphen Kathy, and I'll see you on the call. Thanks so much for joining us today. And please don't forget to check out findingbrave.org for more programs, resources and tips. And tune in next time for your weekly dose of finding brave.