Casey von Neumann & Seth Godin on Creative on Purpose Live!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, welcome to Creative on Purpose Live, a show about flying higher and endeavors that make a difference. Step into possibility with integrity and intention. It's time to be creative on purpose. Are you ready? Let's go. This season features the Ruckus Makers Roundtable. Seth is going to try to say that 4 times fast. And then these are conversations about questions that matter with friends and fellow travelers from Forward Link, an alumni community for Seth Godin's, Alt MBA, and Akimbo Workshops. I'm your host, Scott Perry, Difference Maker at Creative on Purpose and author of Endeavor. I'm an Alt MBA 6 grad and head— on the head coach team for Akimbo Workshops. You can learn more about me and my work at creativeonpurpose.com. Today I'm joined by Casey von Neumann and Seth Godin himself to discuss the question. Uh, what is the question, Casey? Remind me.

Question is, what does it take to make a difference?

What is the question?

The question is, what does it take to make a difference? So now we're going to go to, and we're all thoroughly prepared to answer this question. So Casey and Seth, before we dive into today's discussion, please introduce yourselves to our viewers. Who are you? What's your connection to Akimbo and/or Alt MBA? What are you up to these days? And where can people go to learn more about you and your great work?

I think we could talk about the dip all day long, so I'm up for that as well. So I have done multiple rounds of the marketing seminar. I think I'm finally getting the hang of it. I get a chance to be a coach for this round and a couple rounds back, what we call TMS 7. So all in on the marketing seminar, having a lot of fun with that. In my career, I'm interested in helping people accomplish the things that they set out to do. I'm interested in helping people break through the obstacles that they have. Started out doing that in the context of teaching music lessons at my music school called Eclectic Music. Then I moved toward doing academic programs. One is a brick-and-mortar school in Atlanta called the Little Middle School. The other is an online school called Ruler List Academy. And most recently I've been providing some strategic support for entrepreneurs and creatives. And I blog at wearerulerlist.com and I've been doing that for a little over a year, almost just about every weekday. So, um, bravo! Thank you. I wonder where I got the idea to do that.

Some people who they are and what they do are not necessarily aligned, but with the two of you, uh, and for me on a good day, who we are and what we do are aligned. And I'm a teacher, and I started the Alt MBA because I asked myself a very hard question which is if the world moves online and cares about learning instead of education, what would you do? What would you do to get a 97% completion rate? What would you do to change people's lives in 30 days? What would you do to create community? And I did it once, and it was so stunning that we are now at session 40. So the Alt MBA is at the heart and soul of what we are building. And then around that, We have built a series of workshops that are asynchronous, where you don't have to show up on any given day. And we've got more than 20,000 alumni now in more than 70 countries. Every one of them is special to us. Everyone is taking something different from what we are teaching because we are not in the compliance business. And to see people like Casey and Scott develop into the leaders and coaches that they are is thrilling, and it makes it easy for us to go to work every day. So what a privilege to work with the two of you.

Yeah, well, and, and likewise. I just want to acknowledge before we get started in earnest that you two are profoundly responsible for what I am doing here at Creative On Purpose. Casey, you were— I think we were compadres in TMS 4 when I finally broke through and came up with the brand Creative on Purpose, which Seth immediately endorsed after trashing the Stoic Creative in that TMS one. So I couldn't be more grateful to you both just in general, but that, that you're here today. So we're here to discuss what does it take to make a difference? And I always like to start, Casey, by picking on the person who chose the question, and that was you, and with a little bit of a defining of terms. So What are we talking about when we're talking about making a difference?

Well, I totally cheated, and I asked my middle schoolers on a Zoom call what they thought today, and, and one of the answers that I got— several interesting answers— but one of them was, it's really when you can get somebody to do something. And I thought that tracks nicely with what we have talked about in, in the marketing seminar, really this idea of making a change happen. So, and so we explored the idea of influencing another person to be able to do something or care about something.

How about you, Seth? Same question. What does it mean to make a difference?

So Ted Chiang, the modern fantastic science fiction writer, has a new set of short stories, and in one of them he talks about a device that creates quantum entanglement and leads to new universes. And it turns out in this science fiction world, which I think is actually correct, just one breath of air changes the universe. That you showing up and breathing out, you made a change happen. So we know that everyone makes a change happen just by eating, just by walking, just by being here. For me, the question is, what's the change you want to make happen? And it begins with who's it for and what's it for, the intentional action of leadership. So often we hide from making a change because we don't want to be responsible. And we hide either by saying we're trying to change everyone, which we all know is impossible, or we hide by diminishing the impact that any of us can have, which is completely invalid. And so for me, what it means to make a change is, A, who did you seek to change? And B, are you willing to own it? Are you willing to put your name on it? Are you willing to say, I intentionally caused this change to happen, and I'm glad I did? Because in a world where people have so many options, the question is, will they miss you if you're not there? Will your contribution be missed? If it doesn't show up tomorrow. And now that we're all sheltering in place, so many people in our lives are essential to us. If the healthcare worker didn't show up, if the garbage men didn't show up, if the volunteer firemen didn't show up, if the hardworking person in the supermarket didn't show up, we would miss them because they made a change for us. And so I think our highest calling is to figure out how to become somebody who is making a meaningful change that other people are looking forward to. Yeah. Yeah.

This, and I love this question because it's at the heart of what we're trying to do at Creative On Purpose. We talk about all the time about flying higher in endeavors that make a difference. And that idea that you brought in, Casey, about change is obviously a big part of that. And to Seth's point about doing that with intention, you're shooting, making a difference on purpose and making it with and for people that you've chosen on purpose. Um, you know, and Seth, I love the, the tagline or the, the catchphrase that you came up with during, um, the rollout of This Is Marketing: making things better by making better things. I mean, when we talk about making a difference, we— I think everybody in this room assumes that we're talking about making a difference for the better. But we have to acknowledge that sometimes we can unintentionally or intentionally make, make a difference for the worse. And so, you know, that idea of stepping into possibility is really important to be done with integrity and intention. So now that we've got some clarity around what difference we're— what kind of difference we're trying to make, what do you think it takes to make a difference, Casey?

Well, I think it takes a sense of conviction. I mean, I think when I was— all the years that I thought about what I was going to do and thought about blogging or sharing my ideas, it was kind of going back to what Seth is talking about. Like, am I going to own this and step into it intentionally and let people know, yeah, that was me? And it took getting to a point where I was willing to be brave enough to potentially alienate some people in order to connect with others. And to know myself well enough to know what I had to say, but also to be willing to explore it as I went along and to trust that as I continued, I'd get more clarity about what I had to share and that that if I invested in it, it would be worth something. And that was a kind of a leap and required trust and support to make that part happen.

How about you, Seth?

I love it.

And I want to, you know, this is exactly where I was going. Scott Perry set us up by pointing out that sometimes we make things worse. I want to say that every time we make change happen, we make something worse. That when Carl Benz invented the car, if you had sat down with him and said, this device is going to kill tens of millions of people and lead to a carbon economy, would he still have invented the car? If I launch something like the altMBA, it's going to change the lives of 5,000 people, but what about the people people who feel badly because they're afraid to take it and they could have just glided through their day, but now I'm showing up saying there's possibility and they made their day worse. I didn't kill anybody and I didn't increase global warming, but I definitely made a change happen in the world for some people in one direction and some people in the other direction. And I can't think of a contribution, even Ignaz Semmelweis, teaching doctors to wash their hands that had no negative side effects. Progress always does. Creating moments of status where people move up, creating opportunity that isn't possible always. And you're responsible. So part of what it means to make a change happen is deciding that you have the privilege and the leverage and the possibility, the opportunity to make things better and living with the fact that it can't be for everyone all the time. And I don't know why anyone would volunteer to hang out with middle school kids, but I am so grateful that you have. But isn't that the key to middle school, is that middle school is what happens when a 7-year-old— not a 7-year-old, 7th grader— realizes that all their actions have consequences. Before that, they don't know it. They're not responsible. But suddenly they're in this circle of people where everything they do has a consequence.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the tricky part. But it also— the positive side of it is that they realize that they can choose, that all the people who are hammering away at them and telling them, do this, do that, they start to realize, oh, this is for me. This is my life. And I can step up and take ownership of it. Which is really exciting to see somebody make that connection.

I want to point out, Casey, that in my days as a teacher, middle school was my favorite grade to teach as well. Once you accepted that there— that it's mostly hormonal activity and not always cognitive activity, it becomes really fun to—

In my defense, having run a summer camp I find kids at middle school age individually are extraordinary. It's only when they're in groups that it is a problem.

That could be true of Akimbo alumni as well, I understand. So I just want to highlight the, you know, Casey, you were talking about like showing up and like being on the hook, and I think that's definitely really important. And just this point, You know, I love that. I mean, whoever invented the ship also invented the shipwreck. So there's always a duality in play. And so, you know, for some people, the difference you're making is fantastic and what they want and enhances their lives. And for others, not so much. Um, and so to me, what is kind of being woven into that decision piece that Seth introduces, this idea I'm just tying the two things that you each said together into this idea of agency, this idea of owning the decisions and owning the change. And the idea that if you're going to make change happen, you should be clear and specific about the change, and you should be clear and specific about who it's for, and to your point, Casey, who it's not for. And I guess the other piece that I'm wondering what you all think is how important it is, how important the idea of presence, being in the here and now when we're talking about this, because when you make a decision to Seth's point and you act on that decision, you've made change happen. And at the same time, it's time to make a new decision because you're in a new situation because the here and now. Doesn't stay put. Any thoughts around that, Casey?

My mom and I— I'm staying with my parents right now, my husband and I— and my mom and I, they closed the tennis courts, so we've been playing driveway tennis. And it works better than you'd think. It's basically like learning to hit down the alley. And that's one of the things she's telling me. It's like, no, you got to get back in position. Every time the shot goes out, you get back in position for the next one. So I think that's a useful metaphor. And one of the things that I've learned is that my tendency is to either go kind of like, oh, that was good, and now I can rest, or okay, like, now I don't have to think about it for a second, or like, that was good, so I shouldn't do any more. That's enough for now. And I've had to learn to begin to amplify. So if there is a success or something that seems to be working, to to make more of that and spread the word about it and to be bold about it, which was uncomfortable at first and is still sometimes uncomfortable. But that has been a real key. And sometimes the way of amplifying it is to talk about it and to repeat yourself and across platforms or whatever. But sometimes that amplification is really bringing in other people to help and be part of it. And that that's a really important and really fulfilling part of making a change happen for me.

Yeah. You know, what if we were actually good at predicting the future based on our choices, as opposed to just simply pretending that we were good at it? And we spend all this time worrying and all this time filled with anxiety because we have persuaded ourselves that we are correct in our perception of what is about to happen. And we also spend a fair amount of time counting our chickens before they hatch because we presume that we know that one action will lead to a different outcome. And I think one of the tenets of Stoicism is we're actually not very good at either of those things. And so what if we just dispensed with all the drama around those outcome predictions and instead simply did our best work in this moment based on what we are sure of and let the future take care of itself because it always has.

Can I just say how much I love it whenever you bring a little stoicism into the conversation? It makes me feel so good. It makes me feel so good. I love that, what you both said. I love the piece that you're bringing in, Casey. Well, first of all, We have a gravel driveway. It's really hard to play tennis on a gravel driveway.

I'm just saying.

Oh, stop whining. It's different than clay.

It's a different sport, that's all. It's the same for everybody. If you had a really hilly driveway, you could say that the uphill person has an advantage. That part would be true. But if it's a flat gravel driveway, the gravel's a feature.

You know, Seth, you're right.

You never know where it's going to bounce.

How very unstoic of me to not accept my fate. I was really loving what you're bringing in around the collaboration piece, Casey, because I think that's— I mean, every creative act, I think, is really a collaborative act. Even if you're creating all by yourself, somebody helped provide the raw materials or had some influence or inspiration to the ideas you're unpacking and so on and so forth. And then to Seth's point about, you know, bringing a little stoicism into, into the pursuit of making a difference, you have to accept what happens and you can't be overly attached to desired outcomes. I mean, you— but at the same time, you really, you should be intentional about what you're aiming at. But the idea— this is something that I think I really learned from both of you back in in the early TMS sessions is, um, if you, you can set your intention, but ultimately whether or not you hit the bullseye or not is, is not so much up to you. So that idea that as you are stepping forward into the possibility you're trying to create, you have to be willing to pivot, tact, and as long as you continue to do it with and for the right people for the right reasons, you'll still end up somewhere really great, just might not be right in the middle of that bullseye. I'd love to unpack what you were saying about the collaborative piece, Casey, like just speaking a little bit more to that in terms of, you know, what's your process for— excuse me, Siri is barking at me— what's your process for deciding the difference that you're going to make and who it's going to be done with and for?

That's such an interesting question and something I've been thinking about a lot because what I've observed is that I've, as I've learned how to make some of these decisions and commit and to a large extent, I learned from a beloved college professor, Dr. Dennis Cox, that it doesn't really matter what the choice is that you make as long as you commit to it 100%. Because as I've been saying, it may drift and it may go in a different direction than what you thought it was going to be. But as long as you are responding to that and, and, and being intentional as you move forward, you're, you're going to— it may end up being a different change. And in fact, I've seen a lot of pivots and each of you have seen a lot of pivots in your career as well. But it still is kind of along the same journey. So as I've learned to, to accept that part of it and make the decision and commit, I've seen that then my role is to help other people do the same thing. And, you know, I'm doing that along a couple of tracks, maybe I'm doing that on behalf of this project we're working on together, but also helping them to do that in their lives and to decide, you know, where they're going. And so, and then they're in turn doing that for the people that they're serving. And so it creates this cascading effect of people who are aligned on a particular vision, and also learning the habits and mindsets that facilitates that. Mm-hmm.

How about you, Seth?

Well, I mean, this whole idea of intent goes back to who are we going to collaborate with? You know, Ornette Coleman played jazz that a lot of people didn't want to hear. And that was fine. Because it was voluntary to go hear that jazz. Bob Dylan intentionally, if you can believe his autobiography, intentionally showed up city after city, year after year to make the old fans go away. Right? Because it was like, the first year they're going to think it's a temporary thing. The second year they're going to think I'm annoying. The third year they're not going to come back. So he purged this huge group of people out of his life so he could collaborate with the other ones. And, uh, it's not just music. Anything that we're going to do, if we are going to seek to make a change happen, we cannot do it by ourselves. I mean, there's a certain solipsism associated with washboard abs. You can do that all by yourself. You don't need help from anybody else. But if you want someone to admire your washboard abs, you need to live in a culture where people like that. And so again, it's still about who am I playing this gravel tennis with? And you got to pick who they are. And if you don't like that, pick someone else.

Yeah, I think it's— I'm a big fan of starting with who, because if you get the right who's together, even if you don't know where you're going, you'll decide to go somewhere that's usually really, really great, or at least have a really great time. Getting there. But if you decide on a destination and you get the wrong whos together, whoo.

Right. And that's what we've discovered at Akimbo, 20,000 people in, is that some people don't get the joke and we think that's fine. But the people who keep showing up, it's so much more delightful because everyone gets the joke.

Yeah, yeah. Couldn't agree more. And I love what you were saying, Casey, about creating this virtuous collaborative cycle where— and Seth, this is baked into your work. It's, you know, you teach us so that we can teach others, and the cycle just— it's a ripple effect. So the difference, you know, is Seth may change 1,000 people in a session, but they're all going to go out and change 10, 100, 1,000 themselves, and it just keeps rippling out. As we've been talking, I've been remembering something that you said, Seth, um, about— I can't remember exactly where it was, maybe it was in the Creatives Workshop— but about creative destruction, the idea of, you know, creatives break things when they are making new things. Would you mind just unpacking that a little bit, if I have it right?

So I did a podcast about this last week about Schumpeter and Marx and Adam Smith, but every time you make a thing, a change, the status quo can't be the same ever again. Like, so after John Cage wrote his— it's not called a manuscript. What do they call it when you write the musical score?

Composition.

Composition, uh, for 4'33", which was a piece of, uh, music that had no notes in it. No one else could ever do that again and have it be clever, right? That the— he changed it, he broke it, and he gets points for being the Marcel Duchamp of music, but he also broke it because you don't get to do it again. And if you view the status quo as too precious, then you're not going to ship anything, because the very act of putting something into the world that's worth putting into the world changes what was in the world before you got there. And so part of what we're arguing for, it's not narcissism, but it's the bold generosity of showing up for people who might not you don't get the joke until you tell it, and doing it in a way that makes things better on average, hopefully not just for you, but for the people you seek to serve.

That reminds— so that brings to mind the present moment, which we haven't really talked about yet. But as we're recording, we are in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic. Pandemic. And it is terrible that there are people suffering and, and dying, and nobody would wish that on anybody. But at the same time, there are some, some lessons and silver linings that we're all learning. One of them is that the status quo is kind of a seductive illusion. This idea that we can have certainty about anything, and that the status— that today will be just another day like yesterday, and tomorrow will be very much the same. We've all been disabused of that notion, because now things are profoundly different than they were for most of us just 30 days ago. So maybe just as we're winding down our time together, I'd love for you all to just share, you know, what are the silver linings or the opportunities that you're seeing and exploring in the moment that we find ourselves in? In April of 2020?

There are definitely a lot of lessons. And I'm not sure if I would characterize them as silver linings necessarily, because I think that in the context of learning lessons, it's not necessarily something I would judge as good or bad. It just is. I mean, and that's one of the things that I think the challenge is certainly to accept. And then deal with and make the best of. But definitely, as you said, Scott Perry, the loss of any kind of certainty and the revelation that really how much we are powerless over, how little we have power over, but then that does have a focusing effect of going, okay, well, what can I influence? What change can I make? Where can I make a difference? Once you take a lot of assumptions for granted that have been legitimate assumptions that we can kind of carry along and keep going because that's the status quo, then you say, well, what, what do people need right now? What, what do people need from me? What can I offer? What, how can I not just be noise? And so there's a reckoning there that's, that's certainly been really useful for me. And and a worthy challenge for sure. I'm not sure I've figured anything out, but maybe I will.

I have every confidence. How about you, Seth?

Well, if you've lived a life, everybody has been laid off, everybody has been sick, everyone has lost a relative, everyone has panicked. And the big, big difference right now is that it's all at the same time. And so it's amplified. The tragedy that we're living through is truly a tragedy, and it cannot be minimized, but the thing that makes it the biggest part of the tragedy is it's the first instant global tragedy. And I think that if the— if John BigBouté from Planet 10 came down and changed it so that everything went away in an hour, and tomorrow was back to the way it was. I think it would make tomorrow a much brighter day, but I'm not sure that a week from now many people would be walking through the world that differently than they were a few months ago, because that's what human culture does, is it resets to normal. And so for me, in this moment, if you are healthy, if you are lucky enough to have a roof over your head, and something to eat, what you really have in front of you is a choice. And the choice is to say, "I need more time to panic. I need more time to check CNBC. I need more time to fret about a future that's not here yet. Please leave me alone." Or you can make the choice, which might stick with you for the rest of your life, to say, "What kind of contribution can I become?" And I remember when it happened to me, I was 20, 19 years old, and it happened in an hour, and I just decided. And I grew up, I won the parent lottery, and, but I had fallen into a cycle of being a victim and whining about it. And now we're all victims. And everyone has the right to whine about it. Now what? And so there are definitely days when I just want to crawl back home and say, I've been doing this for 60 years, I can stop now. But the thing that gets me out of bed is there are a few people who are ready to say, now what? And that's why we're here for each other, because this is a slog, but there will be another side. Not back to normal, but there will be another side. And when you get out that side, who are you going to be? Because now we have a chance to become somebody.

Yeah, I love what you both said. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, and one of the things that I've been trying to cultivate within myself is to stop looking at it like a catastrophe and a crisis. I mean, things are very different now than they were before before. But taking myself and my loved ones out of the picture, I mean, from a cosmological point of view, to get back to Stoicism, you know, this is, this is of little concern to the cosmos. It's of concern to us. You know, there are, you know, speaking to, circling all the way back to where we started, some people are really benefiting, or some, not people, but some, some creatures are really benefiting from the fact that humans are staying at home. The planet is a little happier, I think. Um, and so to Seth's point, you know, what do you— so things are different now than they were yesterday, and what are you going to do to make tomorrow better? Because I just can't help— me, I am perhaps a delusional Pollyanna, but I believe that we can exit the situation so much better off and as better people than we entered it. If we make decisions empathetically, compassionately, do work with and for each other, and, um, you know, say we're going over there, who wants to go with us? Uh, that's, that, that's my, uh, that's my hope anyways. I love these conversations. This is the last one, but this is like, I think we're 14 or 15 roundtables, and this will definitely happen again. I could not be more pleased, thrilled, honored, humbled, privileged to conclude this series with the two of you. So Casey, Seth, my friends, thank you so much.

Just thank you both. Thank you, Scott Perry, for leading. Thank you, Casey Perry, for being such a light. Thank you to everybody for the ruckus you're making. It really matters.

All right, thanks very much.

Pleasure.