How To Solve Problems Better Than 99% of People | Seth Godin

My new book, Own Or Be Owned, is all about building a business so good it doesn't need you. I broke it into the 12 Profit Levers… The 12 levers I've seen determine whether you print cash or hate your life. Check it out:https://contrarianthinking.biz/bigdeal-godin - cs And one more thing for the business owners: stop making million dollar decisions alone! Join the Contrarian Growth Boardroom and get a board of advisors to help with every decision: https://contrarianthinking.biz/bdbr The only thing between you and the life you want is the story you’ve been telling yourself. Seth Godin is one of the most influential thinkers of our time and the author of 21 bestselling books, including Purple Cow, Linchpin, and The Dip. He survived 800 rejection letters in a single year, has published a blog post every day for 26 years, and has spent decades helping people escape mediocrity. In this episode, he shares the frameworks for getting unstuck, why the best winners know when to quit, and how to untangle the invisible beliefs holding you back. In this episode, you'll learn: The four horsemen of mediocrity: deniability, helplessness, contempt, and fear, and the habits that quietly keep you stuck How Seth turned 800 rejection letters into a competitive advantage by offering value instead of asking for favors Why the best work is made for people who care, not everyone The Jackson Pollock trap, why wanting two conflicting things keeps you stuck, and how to escape it Why great leaders seek responsibility instead of authority, and how to lead yourself first ___________ (00:00:00) Introduction: Why Most People Choose Mediocrity Over Meaning (00:00:55) The Craft Ethic: 26 Years of Daily Blog Posts and Why Habits Beat Willpower (00:03:55) Strategic Quitting: Winners Are Quitters When It Matters (00:05:43) 800 Rejection Letters in One Year: The Truth About Rejection and Iteration (00:09:38) Feedback Loops Are Everything: Stop Measuring What Mark Zuckerberg Wants (00:12:11) High School Is the Indoctrination: How to Tell If Your Desires Are Actually Yours (00:13:49) Thank You, It's Not For You: The Power of Ignoring the Wrong People (00:14:37) Personal Statements Over Mission Statements: Define Your One Thing (00:16:20) The Seven-Year-Old Bully Story: How to Insulate Yourself From Criticism (00:18:48) The Four Horsemen of Mediocrity: Deniability, Helplessness, Contempt, and Fear (00:23:00) Work That Matters for People Who Care: The Mantra That Cures Mediocrity (00:25:03) The Industrial Age Brought Compliance and Compliance Brought Fear (00:27:04) Managers Use Authority, Leaders Inspire Enrollment: Know the Difference (00:29:08) Lead Yourself First: How to Get Yourself to Change Your Mind (00:31:59) Optimism Is a Tool, Not a Personality: Put On the Right Hat at the Right Time (00:33:40) The Conspiracy of Stuck: Short-Term Conflict Avoidance and Misunderstanding Risk (00:37:56) You Can't Spell Rich Without Risk: The 18 Dollar Garage Sale Test (00:39:13) If No One Comes, No One Will Know: Seth's Mom and the Museum Story (00:41:44) Jackson Pollock and the And Versus But Trap: Why Success Can Break You (00:44:19) Create Things Just For You or You'll End Up Like Pollock (00:48:14) The Smallest Viable Audience: 24 Seats, Filipino Pop Songs, and Enough (00:51:13) Entanglements Feel Like Facts But They're Just Invisible Traps (00:52:31) Tell the Truth and Entanglements Wither: The Three Words That Set You Free (00:54:01) Writer's Block Is a Myth and Resistance Is Everywhere: Steve Pressfield's Gift (00:55:27) The Red Wine Story: You Just Don't Have a Big Enough Why (00:57:05) Comfortable Is Another Word for Stuck: Build New Habits, Not Willpower (00:58:54) I Am Playing the Role of Seth Godin: The Yellow Glasses Come Off (01:00:41) Set Up a Life You Don't Need to Escape From: The Alexander the Great Parable (01:03:07) The Four AM Hotel Lobby: Look at Those Poor Schmoes Escaping Their Lives (01:04:45) Problems Can Be Solved, Situations Cannot: The Final Word on Getting Unstuck ___________ MORE FROM BIGDEAL 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@podcastbigdeal 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bigdeal.podcast 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@big.deal.pod MORE FROM CODIE SANCHEZ 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@codiesanchezct 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codiesanchez 📽️ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@realcodiesanchez OTHER THINGS WE DO 🌐 Our community: https://contrarianthinking.typeform.com/to/WBztXXID 📰 Free newsletter: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3XWLlZp 📚 Biz buying course: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3NhjGgN 🏠 Resibrands: https://resibrands.com/ 💰 CT Capital: https://contrarianthinking.biz/4eRyGOk 🏦 Main St Hold Co: https://contrarianthinking.biz/3YfGa8u Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Why do we become mediocre? The first one is deniability. What we end up with is saying, I am attached to coming up with an idea that everyone is gonna love, being reassured that nothing bad is gonna happen. If I can be guaranteed those two things, then I'll go do it. And that's why most people would rather be mediocre.

• 0:47Codie Sanchez?

  My guest today is Seth Godin. You're gonna hear how Seth survived 800 rejection letters in a single year, and that led him to now writing 21 books, multiple bestsellers. We're going to steal his self-belief so that you can use it for yourself today. Winners are actually quitters, as long as it's strategic quitting.

• 1:05Speaker 01

  Quitting isn't failing. What's failing is sticking with something that's not working and not making me happy. Quitting is a chance to invest in the thing that I ought to be doing next.

• 1:14Codie Sanchez?

  Is there like one single belief that helps to cure mediocrity in most people?

• 1:20Speaker 01

  Well, I have a mantra, which is...

• 1:25Codie Sanchez?

  I want to talk about your insane work ethic, which I've admired for so many years. You've published a blog post every single day for, I believe, 26 years, often two to three times a day. That's, like, some public math, 10,000 posts, maybe more than 3 million words. It kind of puts you among like the most prolific creators, I think, of all time. Picasso, you know, Casey Neistat with his millions of videos, if you want to go a little bit more, more common, Beeple, 17 years of daily art. I guess my first question is, what does hitting publish every single day teach you? And why do you do that?

• 1:59Speaker 01

  I don't think of a work ethic being like this. I have a craft ethic. I have a posture of sharing the work because I think it's worthwhile. And the thing is, I made a decision once, and then I don't have to make it again. So there's gonna be a blog post for me tomorrow, not because it's the best blog post I ever wrote, but because it's Thursday. And that changes everything. Because if you know there's gonna be a blog post tomorrow, when you go to sleep tonight, that's what you're gonna be thinking about. Habits create who we are. And what I found was relitigating each decision was enervating, was undermining me.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  But if I can show up and say, this is my craft, here, I made this, then it becomes who I want to be.

• 2:48Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. Like, I guess, let's say there's somebody listening right now, and this somebody could be me on many days, but, you know, when you don't want to do something, like you have that deep in your veins, please, like, I would rather do anything else in the world except the thing I know I need to do, what would you tell them? Or what do you tell yourself?

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's helpful to break it into pieces, right? Is it common for you to not want to do the thing you have to do? Because if that's the case, then it's not the thing, it's the have-to part, that you're... Right? That people who go on vacation and do things that they just paid a lot of money to do that are supposed to be fun, but if that was their job, they would hate it. So that's part of what's going on here. And we can talk about what are the trades we make to solve problems? What are the trades we make to create the thing we want to build? Or it could be that you're engaging with something toxic, and there's something in your system that's saying, don't do that.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  And I had a young friend who took karate lessons. And after three weeks, he said, they yell at me and they hit me. Now, some people think that's fine. He did not. Don't take karate lessons, right? If it's making you sick to negotiate to win in certain settings, small claims court or whatever it is, then don't. Because you only get tomorrow once, you don't get a chance to do it over again. We have more freedom than we want to admit. So how are you gonna spend the resources you've got, and what are you gonna get in return?

• 4:25Codie Sanchez?

  It's really good, because you've also talked about, like, there's a couple quotes from one of your last books, I think it was The Dip, where you talk about most people are afraid to quit. And that, and you say, winners are actually quitters, as long as it's strategic quitting. When do you know whether to quit or not? And what does that mean?

• 4:43Speaker 01

  So you've talked about this a lot in podcasts and books and things. You're not wearing a tutu, even though you took ballet lessons when you were six. And you're not still wearing your Boy Scout uniform even though you were in the Boy Scout... You've quit things many times in your life, everyone listening to this. But the whole Vince Lombardi nonsense of winners never quit makes absolutely no sense. That what we need to do before we start a project is realize there's gonna be a hard part. That's why it's worth doing. Never quit at the hard part. Either quit before you start, or quit after the hard part. But see that the hard part is coming, right?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  With that said, then we look at our life, our future, our assets, and we say, based on who I am and where I am and the way the world is, ignoring the sunk costs, ignoring how much it cost me to get here, if I was gonna make a new decision today, what makes sense to me, right? So in the case of my blog, I could quit my blog anytime I want. The fact that I've done 10,000 blog posts is a gift from the old me. I don't have to accept the gift. I can say, no, thank you, that's not serving me anymore. And being willing to forgive that past self, refuse that past gift, and say, quitting isn't failing. What's failing is sticking with something that's not working and not making me happy.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  Quitting is a chance to invest in the thing that I ought to be doing next.

• 6:14Codie Sanchez?

  You know, it's interesting, because that idea of not quitting at the hard part is so crucial. Because on the other hand of having every right to quit when you want to, you have also, I believe you got 800 rejection letters from book publishers over...

• 6:30Speaker 01

  In one year.

• 6:30Codie Sanchez?

  You had one year. 800, that's like impressive, almost. Now you've written 21 bestselling books?

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:37Codie Sanchez?

  And so, you know, I guess my question there is like, what do you tell yourself to keep going when you've got a bruised ego and you want to give up?

• 6:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, so many people who are listening or watching to this try really hard and are on the edge of hustling. I don't like hustling. And I want to explain what I mean by hustling and about the letters. Because this whole rejection Olympics thing and keep hassling people until they say yes, that's not what this is about. What happened 800 times in a row is someone in New York publishing bought a stamp, put it on an envelope, and mailed me a letter that said, no. That's a big thing that they had to do to reject me. The thing was two. One, it's their job to look at book proposals. I wasn't spamming people, I wasn't hassling people. If people like me didn't exist, they would be out of work. It's their job.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  And number two, my rejections kept getting better. That the beginning, first few were, no. By the time six months had rolled around, it was, this isn't gonna work for us right now, but would you consider doing something like this? That people saw that I was listening and I was there to serve them. So this is a key distinction. You're not asking for a favor when you're selling something. You're not asking for a favor when you engage with someone. You are offering them something. And if you're not offering people something of value, listen to them. And go build a thing that is actually valuable for them, because it's gotta be voluntary or it's not gonna work.

• 8:12Codie Sanchez?

  That's such a great point, because today's world, there is a lot of rejection porn. That basically, oh, I, you know, I pitched 1,000 investors and they all said no. But the part that they leave out is when, why you get the yes is the iteration, right? It's, no, I listened to you. We had a conversation, even though it was mostly in my head, and I took your feedback, I implemented it, I got better. So by the end of the 1,000, it wasn't they all suck, it was I got better. Is that right?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it doesn't have to be interacting with the same person over and over again. You learned so much from all the people who walked by your store and didn't come in, that you changed the window. And as soon as you changed the window, someone came in and said, oh, I should do that more. So we get what we measure. And the feedback loops are super important. Because if you're measuring the wrong thing... So if you go to the gym and you see someone on one of the stairmasters, and they put their hands on the side rails to lift their weight up, why did they do that? It hurts your back, it doesn't give you a good workout. Because it makes the little number on the stairmaster go up. That's the only reason. Is that why you went to the gym? To make the number on the stairmaster go up? Because if so, you succeeded.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  When we measure things that don't matter, if we're busy counting calories but not losing weight, did we count calories because we like counting calories? Or did we just learn something about our metabolism? And maybe we're counting the wrong thing. So if you want to get funded and people who care enough to listen to you are saying no, can you imagine why they might be right? The answer, they're an idiot, is not acceptable. Why might they be right to reject me? Because everyone who makes a decision is correct, based on who they are, what they believe, what they want, and what they heard from you. Every single time, they are correct. And if you want a different answer,

• 10:04Speaker 01

  you need to tell a different story and create different conditions for that to happen.

• 10:08Codie Sanchez?

  That's a great point. And really counterintuitive to what we actually think in our head.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:12Codie Sanchez?

  Because typically rejection is painful. So you build up a little armor of no's. And then you get on the defensive about why they're the idiot.

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:20Codie Sanchez?

  But I love that because you say, actually, that feedback loops are the secret to improvement. And so breaking this down practically, how could I, listening today, take a feedback loop and make my likes better? Which I loved you had in the book, your most recent book, The Not. There's a lot about feedback loops in there and how important they are. So can you tell us tactically, how would you use a feedback loop to get better every time?

• 10:43Speaker 01

  The first thing I would say is, who gave you the feedback loop you're using? Who's benefiting from that? Mark Zuckerberg? Because Mark Zuckerberg wants you to have a feedback loop of likes and what people are saying about you in the comments. Because if he can get you hooked on that, you will work for free and his advertisers will have something to buy. Right? If you're on YouTube, is the feedback loop the number of views? Because the easiest way to get a lot of views is to do something horrible and it'll attract a crowd. Is that why you're here? Well, that's what YouTube would like you to measure. That's why they made the number easy. And so when, you know, I give advice to friends who are authors. And they're like, but I want to make the bestseller list. Why? What would it mean to be on the New York Times Bestsellers? Because I can tell you how to do it for $65,000.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  There are people who have the books on there, paid money to game their way onto it. Is that what you want? What do you get if that happens? So let's get very clear about what we get for when we put in the effort to do something. Because that's where, when we're solving a problem, what we're doing is we're making an exchange. We're leaning in, doing effort and getting something in return. But if you're measuring what's easy, if you're measuring what your friends are measuring, then you're going to get stuck. So I live north of New York City. And when we used to go to the movies, I noticed it. Many of the teenagers looked the same. This was before the internet. Like, how did they know how to dress? And I finally figured out, they all look like Barbie.

• 12:12Speaker 01

  And that was their method of saying, I'm an insider. But when we talk to kids in high school, they're all unhappy. So the thing they're measuring, which is how can I hang out with the cool kids and look all the same, is actually not the thing that's getting them what they want. But it's super easy. And there's all this pressure to measure the wrong thing. So where I begin is, let's get clear about who it's for and what's it for? And what are we going to get out of this? And then how do we measure more of that?

• 12:41Codie Sanchez?

  It seems like it's taking a lot of mental pauses to ponder, which is not that normal. And actually asking yourself, is this a memetic desire that I have because somebody else has it?

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:52Codie Sanchez?

  Or is this like a deep desire?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:54Codie Sanchez?

  And so what I want to talk a lot about today is getting unstuck. Because I see a lot of people in their way. And I think this book is a guidebook for that. But maybe I'd ask one more question first about, how can you tell if a desire that you have is yours or somebody else's? Because you have so many things that are,

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:14Codie Sanchez?

  quote unquote, weird for, for normal life. You have a lot of boundaries that you put on that would be against normal success. So maybe you could teach us how to do that.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Two words, high school. When in doubt, look at high school. High school is where we got indoctrinated. Indoctrinated to go get a job at a famous company. Indoctrinated to do what the boss says. Indoctrinated to say, will this be on the test? Over and over and over again. The hierarchies, the status, the affiliation. It's about high school. And if high school life is making you happy as an adult, please don't change it in any way. But if you find that you are rehearsing those indoctrinations, it could very well be that someone else is benefiting from that. The local insurance company, the local real estate broker, whatever, whatever. Because you're fitting in all the way and not you.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  And yeah, it takes a lot of guts to take a deep breath and say, no, no, no, that isn't giving me joy. And I'm going to pay attention to what these people think of me and I'm going to ignore those people. And when we were talking about rejection, one of the most powerful things an entrepreneur, a salesperson, a creator, an artist has is a simple sentence, which is, thank you, it's not for you. It might be for somebody. You should make something for somebody. But if someone rejects you because they are left-handed and you're making right-handed scissors, you don't try to persuade them to become right-handed. You say, thank you, but it's not for you. And this is what a successful stand-up comic does. They don't fly to Italy and yell at people who don't speak English.

• 14:52Speaker 01

  They want to work a room with people who are there to hear them. So let's take a deep breath and say, all right, what is important to me and why is it important? And how much of this is about high school? And how much is this about becoming the person I want to be?

• 15:07Codie Sanchez?

  It's interesting, right now, I think, even in what, what I do, I think about this a lot. Because when you have a lot of attention on the internet, you can get really caught into mass people pleasing, you know? And, and I hear this a lot from, from people who work for me. Like, I'm a people pleaser. Seems to be a common thing that people say. And one of the tools that you have, I think, to get out of the way of if you are a people pleaser, is personal statements. I loved your framework for how you think about personal statements. And I'm curious, how would you start writing a personal statement? Which seems to be a way to get unstuck and to make sure you're not stuck on something you shouldn't even be doing in the first place.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. So mission statements, elevator pitches, what a waste. No one ever bought anything on an elevator. You don't need an elevator pitch.

• 15:58Codie Sanchez?

  That's true.

• 15:58Speaker 01

  And if you look at giant corporations, their mission statements are all interchangeable and they mean nothing. And they're hiding the truth. And the truth is, we're here to make money. And all you got to do is like, look at a drug company. Which drugs did they bring out? Which ones did they not bring out? It has nothing to do with their mission statement. It has to do with what made the bosses money. So be honest about it. And now we can make decisions. So purpose is, what's the one thing? What's the one thing I'm trading my time for right now? What's the one thing I'm taking risk for right now? The one thing, if it happened, that would be good. And it's a trap to say money. Because yes, you need enough. Enough might be a very big number.

• 16:41Speaker 01

  But all money is, is a tradable thing. A code, a number, a rank. Money itself isn't why you're doing anything. Once you have enough. So what is it? Who are you trying to please? Who are you listening to? You know, I was walking on Columbus Avenue on the Upper West Side. This was only 10 years ago, so I was 50 something. And as I'm walking, there's a small playground there. And I hear some seven-year-old taunting some other kid. Like really taunting in an angry sing-song voice. And I looked over to see if the other kid was okay. And I realized the seven-year-old was making fun of me. He was harassing me because I was bald. He was harassing me.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  And I got to tell you, for like three minutes after that, I felt bad. I felt like, oh, how did I let this person down? What, what did I do wrong? Should I have been wearing a hat? And I went, wait. Number one, he's seven. Number two, I don't know him. Number three, I didn't make any promises to him that I haven't kept? I forgive you. You're, you're growing up to be a bully and I can't fix that. But how do I insulate myself? My blog has no comments. I don't know the stats in my blog. I don't know how many people read my blog. I don't know how many books I sell. Why? Because nothing about that would make my life better. I haven't read a review of my books on Amazon in 10 years.

• 18:06Codie Sanchez?

  That's crazy.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Because, tell me the truth, you're an author.

• 18:09Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Did reading the reviews make your next book better?

• 18:12Codie Sanchez?

  No.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  Right, of course not. And are you going to write the first book again?

• 18:16Codie Sanchez?

  No.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  No. So why are you reading the reviews? You're reading the reviews because of high school. That what you're doing is going back to, there are people talking about me behind my back in the ladies' room. I can go listen to what they're saying. Is that helping you? And so, you know, the mindset of turning your life into an art project, where you are creating generous work for other people. If you're generous enough, you're going to get paid. And where you're keeping track of what works for you and ignoring, relentlessly ignoring what doesn't work. That's not easy, but you only have to decide once. That's where your purpose statement comes in, which is to say, oh, thank you for that feedback, but I'm looking and you're not on the list of people I care about feedback from. Have a great day.

• 18:59Codie Sanchez?

  That's so true. I was literally going to tell you earlier how proud I was of all the reviews we got for the book. So that is actually hysterical. But you're right. It actually didn't make the second book better. And I think a lot of people in life, you know, if you just do performance art as opposed to art, that can, that can wear on you pretty quickly. But the other side that you talk about a lot in the book and sort of overall in all of your work is this idea of mediocrity.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:25Codie Sanchez?

  And you refer to the four horsemen of mediocrity as deniability, helplessness, contempt, fear. And so I'm curious, one, tell me about the four horsemen. And then, two, how could we figure out which one of those is crippling us?

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Right. All right, first, let me, the word mediocre just means average. And there are two kinds of mediocrity and compromise. And so let's, I want to talk about compromise first. Because compromise isn't exactly the same thing. If you are an architect and you have a client and you bring your perfect building to them and they ask you to make changes to it so it will work better for their business, that's a useful compromise. That's a powerful compromise. On the other hand, if you bring an idea to someone who doesn't want to change, who doesn't want to, they will insist that you sand out all the edges and make it banal. That's a bad kind of compromise. That's the kind of mediocre we're avoiding, right?

• 20:25Speaker 01

  To make it so that every single human doesn't notice us so we don't get criticized. So then, we got indoctrinated, we got a job. Why do we become mediocre? The first one is deniability. Deniability means you don't have to put your name on it because it's what everyone else was doing. And this one is super common, right? The next one is this idea of contempt, which is, I don't care that much about my job. I don't care that much about my customers. It's just not worth it. Anytime you hear someone say, I'm just doing my job, it's because their boss has burned any relationship they have with what they're doing. It's not their fault. They're in a system that doesn't want to reward what they're doing, right?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  And we can go down a list of many other ones, but what we end up with is saying, I am attached to coming up with an idea that everyone is going to love and to being reassured that nothing bad is going to happen. If I can be guaranteed those two things, then I'll go do it. And that's why most people would rather be mediocre. Most people would rather stay in the middle because those guarantees are not on the table. And when we see someone do a live act, the odds that this is going to be the best performance they ever gave are zero. You can't have the best one you ever gave unless you have some that aren't the best ones.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  You have to be okay with that or else you're just going to phone it in. You have to make these choices. Is the work I'm doing generous enough? So when I talk to emergency room doctors, surgeons, how can you do this? After the first patient died, how do you go back to work? And the answer is because someone is going to go and help this person. Is it always going to work? No, but that's the price. The price we pay to show up to help people is sometimes it's not going to work and it's fatal consequences. You and I don't have to deal with that, right? What a treat then. We get to do something, I had to do a blog post. It's, might be the worst blog post of the year, maybe even of the decade. It's not fatal. I'll be back tomorrow.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  You are arrogant, you are lazy, and you're stupid. If you're sitting there and you cannot afford supercars, you're one of those three. You should work 84 hours a week.

• 22:44Speaker 04

  No family, no kids, no girlfriend.

• 22:46Speaker 05

  Every day you wake up, the only thing that should be on your mind is money.

• 22:48Codie Sanchez?

  That's not what being rich looks like. Jeff Bezos is worth $257 billion because of Amazon. He drinks coffee and reads the newspaper in the morning. Tim Cook earned $74.3 million at Apple last year. He turns his phone off to go to the gym. Berkshire Hathaway is worth $1.3 trillion. Warren Buffett founded it with his best friend. You don't have to wake up at 3:00 AM every day. You don't have to give up your life and you definitely don't have to do it alone. The goal was never a business you run. It's a business that runs without you. It's time to take back control of your business and your life. Come do it with me on September 18th. I'll see you there.

• 23:28Codie Sanchez?

  I feel like when you can, when you can diagnose what you're doing, it's so much easier to fix it. And half the time, we know that something's wrong, but we can't diagnose what it is, why it's happening. And so it's not just that we're stuck and we're lazy and whatever. It's, we actually just haven't been able to figure out what the disease is. So we're trying all the vitamins and, you know, don't realize, ah, it's actually just get outside, get some sun, take a walk. You don't need a vitamin. And so I really like this. I think, I don't know if this is too particular of a question, but is there like one single belief that helps to cure mediocrity in most people? Like if you believe in this, you can cure this desire to just play it safe and be mediocre?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  Well, I have a mantra, which is work that matters for people who care. And it has two parts. You have to start with the second part. Only for people who care. You have to ignore the people who don't care. All right. Among the people who care, what would matter to them? Can I do something that would matter to them? So let's say you have a job in a big company and you're feeling stuck. And I can talk about why that might be, but you say, I don't have any agency. I don't have any freedom. I just have to do what they tell me to. And I ask you the following. Would you get fired for starting a book group once a week over lunch on Fridays? Six people.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Probably wouldn't get fired for that. Could you pick five people who would really like to be in that group? If you organized that group, would your life get better? Work that matters for people who care. Because guess what happens? After the book group's working really well, the next time they need a little project done, they'll ask you if you want to do it because you just demonstrated you could make this thing work. And then the next thing, and then the next thing. That we get freedom by using the agency we deny we have well, so that the people around us will give us more.

• 25:31Codie Sanchez?

  It's really prescient in this day and age, kind of with how society is and the infrastructure. And you have a quote that I love from your blog, which is, "The industrial age brought compliance and compliance brought fear and fear brought us mediocrity." What do you mean by this and what can we do about this?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  So what's the industrial system? If you have a car, the reason it doesn't cost $6 million is because it's not made by hand. It has interchangeable parts. It was made in a factory. And the fact is you can go get a, you know, a little wireless lav now for $99. It should cost a million dollars, but it's made in a factory. Factories are about repetitiveness and they're about compliance. So we had to build a public school. You can look in the public, the history of public school. Public school was built by factory owners to train people to do what they were told. And the way we get people to do that is we give them prizes, weekly salary, and then we threaten them with punishment, fear. Do what I say or you're out the door.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  And so you're on the assembly line faster and faster and faster, repeating what you did yesterday. And the assembly line doesn't have to look like Charlie Chaplin putting together a car. If you're doing insurance claims, you're on the assembly line. And there's one reason why AI is freaking so many people out because AI is eager to go into the assembly line, doing the same thing over and over again. So we've got factories that create value and then we've got fear as the weapon that they use, which leads to compliance. And compliance is all about, how do I fit in the middle so they don't notice me? And that cycle built our culture. It made us all the richest people in the history of the world, but it also created all sorts of pain and suffering because that's not what human beings were born to do.

• 27:16Codie Sanchez?

  It's interesting. It makes me think of leaders versus managers.

• 27:19Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 27:20Codie Sanchez?

  You know, I'm a leader at our company and I've been a manager at other people's company before. And it is actually quite hard, even as a leader, I think, to not fall into the salary plus you could potentially get fired trap. You know, it's not only like when you are subjugated to it, you're part of the system. You then become that type of leader and you almost have to fight, I feel like, your inherent desire to just be complied with and have people do what you want them to do as a leader. And so you draw really important distinctions between managers and leaders. What makes the difference between a manager and a leader?

• 27:58Speaker 01

  So you are the leader of your company, but lots of companies don't have a leader. They have a manager. They're not the same thing. Managers use power and authority to get people to do a job they know can be done. So we need managers at hotels, at fast food restaurants. Someone to make sure that the subway's running on time, that's management. Leadership is voluntary. You can't require people to follow you as a leader because if you do, you're a manager. Leadership is, I'm going over there, who wants to come? Leadership is, this might not work. So in your career as an independent thinker and writer and podcaster and investor, you have done many, many things that weren't in the playbook.

• 28:43Speaker 01

  And your value add is not that you are a boring manager who does, Goldman is filled with people like that. Your value add is you are willing to go to a frontier and do things that might not work. And so people choose to follow you. And so if you are running a business where management is important, you're going to have to figure out how to run an industrial business where you get people to comply. I'm glad the pacemaker company, if you have a pacemaker, has Six Sigma with compliance. It's not like, oh, we did our best, but it was Thursday. No, they, they really nailed it down. But if you want change to happen, you're going to need to lead. And you do that by creating the conditions for enrollment, creating the conditions for

• 29:28Speaker 01

  possibility so that people choose to go on this journey. And then when it's time for the business to be managed, you should probably sell it.

• 29:37Codie Sanchez?

  Interesting. You have a saying, managers want authority, leaders want responsibility. My question is, what is the first step you can take to become a leader and not a manager?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  The most important thing is to lead yourself.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  And we have a lot of trouble with that. And what The Knot is about is, you know, many of my books have been, how do you get other people to change their mind? This is about how do you get yourself to change your mind? And how do you figure out how to be more curious? How do you figure out how to be more resilient? How do you figure out how to measure what matters? Because once you start doing that, you will begin to move. And when you will begin to move, then people who want to move will begin to follow you. And, you know, I love the Main Street model of boring, small, recession-proof businesses. Most of what makes them boring is, on the outside, they're not looking for innovation. Right?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  If I need my lawn mowed, I just want it mowed. I don't need you to be innovative. But on the inside, there's huge value add. If you can figure out how to innovate, how your employees engage with each other and with the customers. Those sorts of shifts are critical. And this is what it means to be a professional. What it meant to do hard work 100 years ago, where you needed to change your clothes twice a day because you were digging ditches. We're so lucky we don't do that anymore. At least I am. Okay, so what's the hard work? And the hard work isn't like gritting your teeth and getting through it. The hard work is being clear with yourself and then your team about the change you seek to make. What is the purpose of what we're doing?

• 31:22Speaker 01

  So if you look at Will Goddara and Danny Meyer and talk about hospitality, hospitality doesn't come naturally at the end of a six-hour shift. It's the work. That's what we're talking about. Where is the work?

• 31:34Codie Sanchez?

  It's really underrated and hard, too. Because, you know, I think in this day and age, we use Slack so much, in my company, for instance, which is a great way to remove all emotion and just have sort of compliance, top-down leadership.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 31:47Codie Sanchez?

  And I always try to go back to the quote that's, you know, if you want to teach your people how to build a boat, don't teach them about nails and ropes and bindings. Teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea, which is some saint that I can never remember, but I should remember because I quote it a lot. And I think your work does a really good job of that. It's like, we want to inspire people and ourselves, not just mandate things. Like, I know you famously don't like the word "should," too, which I think is probably important. I know you've said optimism is a choice and a tool.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:21Codie Sanchez?

  I can sometimes be proud of the fact that I'm a realist, and that could even border on a pessimist take. I'd be curious, your stance. How do we switch to optimism? How do you have a choice to be optimistic? How could we do that if somebody's stuck being really pessimistic?

• 32:40Speaker 01

  Well, so, Cody, this is the first thing you've ever said to me that wasn't true. You're an optimist, and that's a key to what you've built. You're not a foolish optimist. You're not saying, "I'm going to invest in this company and hope it's going to go well." And what we want is, when we're making a decision, like, how do I invest $100,000, we want to put on a pessimist hat and say, "In this moment, let me make a list of all the things that could go wrong. Let me be very clear about the possible failure points." But the only way you're going to go forward is, once you've established a foundation, is to say, "Now, how do I act as if?

• 33:24Speaker 01

  How do I set this up in such a way that if things work, we're going to get even more of where we want to go?" So the problem with doom-scrolling, naysaying, and pessimism as a habit is you talk yourself into mediocrity again. You talk yourself into deniability. You talk yourself into a future that you don't want to end up with. And so, when I say that optimism is a tool, it's simply to say, when I'm going to make a decision, the first thing I want to do is put my pessimist hat on to make sure I'm not going to be out of the game. But then, my optimist hat says, where are the chances to lead? Where are the chances to create value here?

• 34:07Speaker 01

  But if you're fully a pessimist, you're never going to think through those things.

• 34:10Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, and I think if you're fully a pessimist, you're not going to ever get unstuck because you won't take action, which requires optimism. And I like the way you framed it in The Knot about confusion is often in the way of moving forward. It's not just pessimism, but, you know, you talk about the conspiracy of stuck is built on basically three confusions. And the confusions being short-term conflict avoidance, unwillingness to create tension, misunderstanding of risk. What are those, and how do you fight these types of confusion?

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. So, short-term conflict avoidance is something that I'm glad we have in our culture. Right? Someone cuts you off in traffic, you don't ram their car. That we don't, we've been calloused recently with all the spam phone calls and all the people hustling us to be confronted all day long with this. But for 10,000 years, human beings were generally kind to each other. And so, when we need to speak up to get unstuck, the easiest thing to do is not bring it up at the dinner table, not bring it up with your parents, something that's been going on for too long, not bringing it up because in, for one minute, it will be awkward. So we just live with it for a very long time.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  So that's why the word "short-term" is there, that it's worth having a short-term conflict if it leads to long-term benefit to both sides. Just say it. The second one is about the unwillingness to create tension. Tension and stress are different. Stress is bad. Stress wears us out. It leads to trauma. Tension is pulling a rubber band back before you let go. If you don't pull it back, it's not going to fly across the room. So, when Taylor Swift says, "Tickets are going to sell out in 20 minutes," she just created tension for everyone in the room. Because if you don't buy a ticket right now, you're going to get left out.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  So when we show up to lead, when we show up to create possibility, when we get unstuck, we're going to cause tension for other people. We inflict it on purpose. We willingly inflict tension. Your book comes out in September. When people know that, there's tension that exists until they preorder it. Because you invented that tension, right? And then, what we know is, we are terrible at being rational about risk. People still buy insurance before they get on an airplane. Airplanes never crash. It is way more dangerous to drive to the airport than to fly to wherever you're going. But it feels more dangerous to be on a plane.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  And we hesitate to ask our boss something that's mutually beneficial, because it feels super risky, even though in the history of this organization, not once has it ever led to someone's career ending. But it feels risky. So, when people show up and they're making huge progress through an industry, it's usually not because they have more skill than you, but they're better at understanding what's actually risky versus what feels risky. Public speaking is not risky. It just feels risky. So people like you and I can go on stage and give a speech because everyone else thinks it's too risky. No, it's risky to work in a coal mine.

• 37:35Codie Sanchez?

  You know what's crazy, too? I've been in a coal mine, oddly, and even that risk now has decreased so hugely, not to mention how much they get compensated for it. And I was worried about black lung and all of these things that kind of don't exist anymore. Now, granted, it's much riskier than me and my spreadsheets, you know? But there's even a perceived risk there that's huge that isn't real. I've been obsessed with this idea lately because I think you can't spell rich without risk. Like, if you want to make money, I don't know anybody who can do that for you with no risk. And if they can, they probably keep that secret to themselves. But it seems like our entire society is set up to not have risk. You know, even now, you know, younger people getting married less, having sex less, some

• 38:18Codie Sanchez?

  of that's good, perhaps, but also it's just like tamping down our risk spectrum. So I wonder, like, for somebody who's sitting there and worried about taking on more risk and putting themselves out there, what do you say to them? Or what do you repeat to yourself when you're like, "This feels risky. I'm going to do it anyways"?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  The way you learned how to walk and the way you learned how to talk, and almost everything that's important, is you did it a little. You discovered what happened, and then you did it some more, and you got good at it. Please don't quit your day job. Don't quit your day job. Go try to mortgage your house, risk your life savings. Don't do that, right? But maybe, on Saturday, go to a garage sale, buy $18 worth of stuff, and see if you can sell it on eBay. Is that risky? I don't think it's risky. I think it's generous. Because there's somebody in Toledo who wants that thing you found, and they're eager to pay for it, and you're going to charge them less than it's worth. And there was someone in the garage who wanted to sell it to you, and they're eager

• 39:21Speaker 01

  to sell it, and you paid what they thought was, and you came out ahead by creating value for people. So when people talk to me about risk, I ask them things like this. Like, when was the last time you did something generous that might not work? Where if it didn't work, only three people would know? And that's how I grew up. That's how I spent the formative years when my business was struggling. I was constantly doing things where if they might, if they didn't work, almost no one would notice. And you may have heard me tell the story about my mom, but I'll tell it again. My mom was one of the pioneers of museum stores.

• 40:03Speaker 01

  She co-founded the Museum Store Association, and the museum at the Albright Knox in Buffalo is a great museum. It was her full-time gig. When I was a teenager, she came home one day, on a Friday, and she seemed a little down. I said, "What's wrong?" She said, "Well, we're doing this thing tomorrow." Where she had gotten two appraisers from Sotheby's to come to the museum, because she wanted to get people who never came to the museum to come. Buffalo's a working-class town. Bring what, you know, your grandmother's candlesticks. We'll tell you if they're worth anything. She said, "So, I've made this commitment to these people, and I'm worried because what if no one comes?" And then she turned to me, and she said, "Well, if no one comes, no one will know that no one came."

• 40:48Codie Sanchez?

  God, such a good line.

• 40:50Speaker 01

  And it became a mantra for me. And the next morning, we went to the museum and there were 5,000 people waiting in line.

• 40:57Codie Sanchez?

  Because it was a generous thing to do.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Everyone came out ahead. And if no one had come, no one would have known.

• 41:03Codie Sanchez?

  Obviously Seth talks a lot about getting unstuck, but for business owners, stuck isn't always so clear. It could be another quarter where revenue is technically up, but cash still feels tight, hiring is messy, important decisions somehow lands back on your desk. That is exactly why we built the Growth Boardroom. It's not for people trying to buy their first business. This is for owners with a real business, who have real problems and want to get to the next level of the game, without having to do all the expensive things yourself. So what is it? Inside, you get my advisors, who helped me build my businesses, operators, our advisory practice, and systems we use as private equity to scale your business to the next level of the game. So let's say you're having problems with cash flow, you want more of it, or you need

• 41:45Codie Sanchez?

  to hire a new player, or your sales team is a little bit broken, or maybe it's the fact that the business only works when you're in every meeting? Yikes. Growth Boardroom is going to help you fix that. You join us for one year of advisory, and we help you turn the tables on your business revenue, growth, and profits. Also, this unfortunately is not for everybody. If you own a business and want to see if you qualify, you can hit the link below, fill out an application, and if you're a fit, we'll invite you out to join our boardroom. So there's a famous artist, you tell the story about Jackson Pollock, and you have a story that I love, and it's in the not, isn't it? Can you tell that story?

• 42:24Speaker 01

  So in the middle of the 1900s, Jackson Pollock was the most famous painter, other than Picasso in the world, certainly the most famous American painter, cover of Life magazine. He had three years in a row where every single thing he painted sold instantly, and today is worth tens of millions of dollars. And then he stopped, and he went back to his studio in Long Island, and started painting a totally different kind of work, different scale, different look. And his wife, Lee Krasnow, also an artist, said that he had decided he had gone as far as he could with what he had done before, the drip paintings, and he didn't want to be like a cover band, doing rehashes of Jackson Pollock paintings. He wanted to go back to being the artist.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  And so with all that momentum, with everything going for him, and we've been talking this whole time about what do people do who don't have that, right? With all that momentum, he brings the new work out, big show, and everyone hates it. The critics hate it, no one buys it. You've probably never seen any of the paintings. I had to look really hard to find them. I don't like them either. And it led to his drinking increasing, and he ended up dying in a drunken car crash, taking someone with him. Why? Because he wanted two things, not one. He wanted to be on the edge, to be on the frontier, to be an artist, and, but it's

• 43:54Speaker 01

  not and, it's but, but, he also wanted to be successful, sold out, and rich. And because the two things couldn't happen at the same time, he broke. And that and and but dichotomy completely changed my life. Once you understand that you're carrying all these buts around, and that the buts are what are keeping you from doing the thing you say you want, now you can make a choice, which is stop saying you want it, and live with the fact that the but is there, or get rid of the buts and turn them into ands. I'm going to run the marathon and I'm going to get tired, not, I'm going to run the marathon, but I don't want to get tired. And once you add the and, right?

• 44:36Speaker 01

  I'm going to buy these sorts of Main Street businesses and my fancy lawyer friends aren't going to think I'm fancy. Great, that goes with it, part of the deal.

• 44:49Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah, it seems like you've got to do this, too. Like, the indoctrination to not ending up like Pollock is that you have to create things just for you, even if they tank. I mean, we talk about that sometimes on this channel. My favorite videos that we ever do, or my favorite pieces of content are the ones where I'm like, I don't care if anybody else, like, I'm ramped up about this today. Or even, you know, sometimes I'll show them to my husband or friends, and they'll be like, this is so cringy. I'm like, I love it. I think it's so fun, I don't care. And I think if you don't have those every so often, then you end up like letting other people drive your life. And I see it a lot with the algorithms, too. You know, I was just at this like, big YouTube creator thing, and it was the biggest YouTube

• 45:29Codie Sanchez?

  creators in the world, and I don't really label myself as a YouTuber, or a podcaster, or a whatever-er. I just think I do stuff that I find interesting, and I like business, maybe, I'm a business person. But it was fascinating, they all talked about how, once you get boxed in as like, one type of format, one type of video, it's really hard to break out of that. But then you start becoming sort of a mirror to everybody else's desires instead, and that seems super dangerous.

• 45:59Speaker 01

  Yes, but we got to be clear about the choices and the consequences.

• 46:05Speaker 01

  They called me up a bunch of years ago when it was first starting, and they said, well, you auditioned for Shark Tank, we want you to be one of the judges on Shark Tank. And I said, well, what do you think? And they said, well, you would be the nasty judge.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And they actually have a bald nasty judge now, but you would be the nasty judge.

• 46:22Codie Sanchez?

  It's Kevin, right?

• 46:23Speaker 01

  I'm not saying anything.

• 46:24Codie Sanchez?

  I know Kevin, so I could give a crap.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  And I said to myself, there's a real cost to that. If you want the prizes that come from that, you have to pay the price that comes from that. So in your case, there's an alignment. There are a few people who, when you like it, they like it. And that's great, but if you want to be Oprah, you can't do that. Because Oprah has to do things that large numbers of people are going to like. So the thing you're not allowed to do is become entitled. When you're entitled, you've just added the but. I want to do exactly what I want to do, but I want lots of people to like it. No, can't have it both ways.

• 47:06Codie Sanchez?

  How many of your books that you wrote were, I want to do this, don't care what anybody else thinks, as opposed to, I think this is a huge book, and so I'm going to do it?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  I've never written a book that was supposed to be a huge book.

• 47:23Codie Sanchez?

  Never?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  I tried when I was a book packager. I did the Beer Selling Ladies Common Sense Investment Guides, those were very, very big books. They were, I had four of them on the New York Times Bestsellers at the same time. But that wasn't my book, I was helping somebody else make their book, even though, you know, I touched all of it, their name was on it.

• 47:45Speaker 01

  The thing is that it's very hard to make something knowing it's going to be big. Now, there is a book I wrote called Survival is Not Enough, and Charles Darwin wrote the foreword, which is not easy, because he's dead. And I was indulging myself with that book. I spent a full year, eight hours a day, I wrote 200,000 words, because I could, and the book didn't sell. And I don't talk about the book on stage, because every time I talk about it, people's eyes glaze over. Evolution is just not a good thing to talk about on stage, because it confuses people. Okay, fine, right? But I didn't completely get kicked out of the industry either.

• 48:29Speaker 01

  I got mostly kicked out of the industry, because that was the consequence of writing a book, that I was just indulging myself. So when Purple Cow came out, I didn't have a publisher. And I published it myself in a milk carton for only 5,000 people, because I was writing it for them. I didn't write that book for me, I wrote that book for them. And so ever since then, I have never written a book for me. I try to imagine, who are, what's the minimum, smallest viable audience? That would be enough. Is that number commensurate with what I'm going to have to put into it, what my partner's going to have to do? Because if it doesn't match, then I'm being indulgent.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  But if it does match, if you can satisfy that smallest viable audience, and, you know, in the case of a landscaping business, it's six blocks in the suburbs. If those 500 people think you're the best there ever was, it's enough. And that's the goal, is where can we find that smallest viable audience? There's a little shop in Brooklyn called 69 Atlantic and the Art of Play. It's smaller than this studio. And they sell little puzzles and things in the front, and then there's a secret door in the back, don't tell anyone I told you. And two or three nights a week, they open a bookshelf, and there's a little room behind

• 49:51Speaker 01

  it that has 24 seats, and the greatest magicians in the world come to this room with 24 people in it. It's totally worth going. And if it was 240 seats, none of it would work. It's the right number of people, in the right room, for the right reason, that's enough. Just figure out what your enough is. It might be a million, right? If you're on YouTube and you don't have a million, you're not going to make a living. But there's eight billion people in the world, a million's not that many. I know a guy who does, you know those reaction videos?

• 50:21Codie Sanchez?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:22Speaker 01

  He does, he and his partner, who is a songwriter, both from the Midwest, do reaction videos to Filipino pop songs.

• 50:33Speaker 01

  And they did a couple at the first because it was funny because they don't understand the words or anything, but the Filipino audience found them and they make a full-time living doing this because they found their people. That's what the internet's for. It's a terrible mass medium. It's a very good micro medium.

• 50:51Codie Sanchez?

  It is really freeing when you think about it that way because you can make money doing just about anything. And there's a lot of downsides that come with really, really big. It's just increasing complexity. So I always think like, you know, what a beautiful thing it is that, and you've talked about this in many ways. You've talked about this like minimally viable group of people often in your books, which is really freeing. And then, you know, Kevin Kelly's got his thousand true fans. And I think those two models can really help small businesses who can make millions or tens of millions off of a very small subset of people. You know, we have, you know, we get 130 million views a month, but the people that I actually sell anything to is probably 3,000 or 5,000 people a year. That's not very many people.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  And they would, and they would all miss you if you were gone.

• 51:35Codie Sanchez?

  Uh huh, yeah.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  And that's the key. You don't want to hustle people who wouldn't miss you. But if you're offering something to people who would, they say thank you.

• 51:43Codie Sanchez?

  God, so freeing because, you know, you want to like everybody to like you. It's that high school mentality. I think one other thing I want to talk about from you is you talk about, you have this line that I love. The stickiest entanglements don't feel like traps. They feel like facts. First, can you sort of define what is entanglements? And then what do you mean by that?

• 52:04Speaker 01

  Right. So entanglements are at the heart of everything we've just talked about. They're invisible action at a distance. They are the magnetic forces that undermine what we're doing. They are the high school teacher who's still trying to prove was wrong in what they said about us. The old girlfriend who doesn't even know we exist anymore. They are the memory we have of getting scolded when we were seven and we don't want to get scolded again. We are entangled with all of these feelings, spooky action at a distance. They're not in the room, but they are. We, you know, we paid $300,000 to go to dental school. Our family supported us. We made it through. And 15 years later, we hate being

• 52:47Speaker 01

  a dentist. And so now we're going to spend the next 50 years drilling kids' teeth because we are entangled with a decision we made 15 years ago. We don't have to do that. We can say, it's true that happened and I forgive myself or I forgive whatever else came along because these aren't facts. These are just things we are choosing to focus on. And when we watch people who are excellent at what they do in any field, it's because they figured out as a professional how to get unentangled with that other thing that holds everybody

• 53:27Speaker 01

  else back. And my argument is the secret to dealing with it is three words. Tell the truth. If you tell me the truth about your entanglements, they wither in the sunlight because they're so absurd when we say them out loud. If we keep saying them out loud, oh, thanks for offering me to do that. But I remember when I was nine, this thing happened. So I'm afraid to go to this conference because it might have, what? Right? Tell the truth at work. When we're entangled at work, like, why do we have this weekly meeting every Thursday? Well, we need to have a meeting. No, we don't have to have a meeting. We could

• 54:07Speaker 01

  just have a memo. Why do we have this meeting every Thursday? Well, oh, because the boss likes it if we all sit in a circle, shake our heads and agree with her. Okay, now we're clear about why we're having the meeting. We can make a new decision based on that truth.

• 54:23Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. Why is it so hard for people to tell the truth? And how do you tell yourself the truth about these situations?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Entanglements are very good at preserving themselves. That's why they're still around. So they come up with an enormous number of reasons to keep us from doing it. My friend Steve Pressfield calls this resistance. Resistance is the invisible force that, for example, invents writer's block. No one has writer's block. Writer's block is a myth. You don't get talker's block. So write down what you say. You're done. You wrote. Now, it might not be good, but you didn't say you have a shortage of good writing. You just said you can't write. So show me all your bad writing. And if you keep doing enough bad writing, something good is going to sneak in there. I'm sure of it. So resistance is

• 55:14Speaker 01

  everywhere you look. It's the parts inside of us, the tender parts, the scared parts, the little kids who are protecting themselves in a shell, who are hiding and fighting overtime to force you to sabotage what you say you want to protect themselves. And if we can tell the truth about why you're going to a singles bar instead of building a real relationship, why you're eating that instead of going to go for a walk, whatever it is, if we can be clear about it, it will wither and die. It will always be something we're aware of, but you can make a difference for people if you care enough to do this work. Every problem is solvable.

• 55:57Codie Sanchez?

  So in practice, how would that work? Like, I remember I sat with Tony Robbins and I was like, I was trying to, you know, with him, I'm like, I want to see him in action, you know? So I'm like, so I want to give him something that I'm bad at or struggling at and have him fix me, you know? Like, is it this what we do here? And he was so funny because at the time, it was, I was trying to drink less wine. Like, it doesn't make, I'm older. This is the lamest thing ever, but it's just what was on top of mind for me. I'm, I'm getting older. It doesn't sit that well with me. I love red wine, though. Like, I love the whole thing about it. And, you know, so I just would end up drinking a glass or two every night as part of my process. And it was very funny because I told him that. He like looks at me, you know, and he's, we've talked about, he's very intense.

• 56:39Codie Sanchez?

  But in that moment, he's like, oh, honey, you just don't have a big enough why. And then he kind of like carries on into the next thing. And I thought about that for a while and I was like, I don't feel fixed. So I'm not sure, you know, what happened here. And then I, I thought about it later. And since then, my husband and I have been focusing on fertility, which is a big why. And lo and behold, I'm not drinking anymore. And it's not even a problem. And so I was wondering, in your take, like, sometimes I hear these things, like, we need to find our truths, but they are hidden. They hide. And they're really smooth talkers.

• 57:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:12Codie Sanchez?

  So let's say somebody right now is struggling with, I feel stuck in creating my thing, my art, my work, whatever. How would you poke them to get to the reason why they're, to the story that they're telling themselves, basically?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, Tony is brilliant at this and I am not. My, my take is you should poke yourself. And, because I'm not going to be in the room for very long and you can have some things that you can approach. So what we see when we get stuck is, stuck is another word for comfortable. And we build all sorts of habits to keep us stuck because we want to be stuck because it's comfortable. So if we want to undo habits, the best way to do it is not to constantly require willpower, but to build new habits. A blog post every day is a habit. So if you tell me that you want to do this and I'm going to take you

• 58:11Speaker 01

  at your word that you're serious about it, let's explore where the entanglements are. Well, I don't like criticism. I'm worried that I'll get fired from my job. I'm afraid that if I do this, no one will come. Okay, great. If you did it under another name, how many of those problems go away? Because what you were saying is you want to do creative work and you want to get credit for it. Those are two different things. So the but was a problem because it wasn't really an and. If you were willing to not get credit for it, would it be easier for you to do creative work? So let's make a habit. There's going to be a blog post every single day for four weeks, doesn't have your name on it. There's absolutely no downside. If you come back here in four weeks and you haven't done it,

• 58:56Speaker 01

  then you don't want to do the work. But if you do the work, a month from now, you're a blogger. A month from now, you're a writer. A month from now, you're somebody who's written 3,000 words. And your next 3,000 are going to be better. But what you were really saying is that you want to be Cody and you want 130 million views without doing, yeah, of course, you're not going to get that. But let's discover how do you become the kind of person who does this? The kind of person that when they look in the mirror sees someone who does things like this? When I am in public, I am playing the role of Seth Godin. I'm not really Seth Godin. I know what that role is like. I know how to act that role, but

• 59:41Speaker 01

  that's a choice. So you become that by forgiving the entanglements, letting go of the person you've become habituated to be, and instead make one decision and turn it into a series of habits. And if you're willing to do this work, I've never once heard from someone who did the work and didn't get the output. But you might not be willing to do the work and that's fine. It's fine with me.

• 1:00:09Codie Sanchez?

  Do you take off the yellow glasses when you're not Seth Godin? Like, what's the one? What's the, what's the Superman to, you know, Clark Kent?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  So one thing I found, I used to go to Ted a lot. People don't believe it, but most Ted speakers are introverts.

• 1:00:26Speaker 01

  That they don't walk into a cocktail party and shake hands with every single person. And so, most of the time, I'm sitting in a room by myself with my puppy, and I'm writing, or I'm thinking, or I'm talking to Claude, or whatever it is. But I'm not like that. I mean, I think Tony's like that all the time. But most of the people who do what we do, we're not like that all the time.

• 1:00:46Codie Sanchez?

  Yeah. No, I'm the same. I actually, it gives me anxiety, although I'm very loud on the internet. But my husband is actually the one. When we go out in public, he's great. You know, I call him my front man, because he gets to go have all the action, talk to everybody, and I kind of chill. I like to think about things, which is probably why we app on the internet or write books. You know, I'm actually quite comfortable with that. I just feel like there's some sort of service that comes from sharing it with other people. Then I get those feedback loops.

• 1:01:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Codie Sanchez?

  I want you to tell the story that goes with this quote that I got to put on the wall, which is, instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life that you don't escape from. Very poignant, especially today, when for a lot of people, that is possible. You know, that, especially in the US. It's pretty possible. And you open up with a parable about a man named Alexander the Knot. And I thought there was a lot of similarity between the two. So would you mind telling that story?

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  So, they call him Alexander the Great. I think when he was 17, knowing he added the great part, he was just Alexander. And there was a legend in a small town in Turkey that there was an ox cart that was tied with a very complicated knot to the edge of town. And it was said that whoever could come and untie this knot would become the ruler of all of Europe. And Alexander showed up. And there's a myth about it that's not true, which is that he took out a sword, cut it in half, and said, "There's no knot." That's not really what the story was. The story was this. He showed up, he heard the story, he saw the complicated knot,

• 1:02:22Speaker 01

  and he said, "Wait, there's a wooden post in the middle of it. If I just pull this post out, the knot sort of takes care of itself." Because it had entwined itself and was concealing the real problem. Pull out the post, and the knot gets fixed. That doesn't mean it's easy. It takes a lot of practice to realize, where's the post? Where's the entanglement? Where's the thing I'm going to pull out? But we're surrounded by knots. There are all these people who want us to be mildly unhappy. There are all these people who want us to measure the wrong things and buy solace in the form of a bottle or a fast food or whatever it is. That's good for them, to make us reasonably unhappy all the time.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  But when you see where the post is and you see where the knot is, you can make different choices. Now, the quote you shared is from the beginning of my book, Lynch Pin, which I wrote 20 years ago, 15 years ago. And the world has changed since then. It has made it harder for freelancers and for people with a day job to find joy in their work. Because they basically have mechanized everything and turned us into keystroke-counting cogs. But there's still an attitude shift that goes on. And it was, I'm not good at jet lag. It was 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm sitting in the lobby of this hotel when I'm on vacation. And my family's asleep.

• 1:03:49Speaker 01

  What am I going to do? And I'm checking my email. And I'm enjoying it. Because no one's telling me what to do. I get a chance to do it. And these two people walked by. I don't know why. They were up at 4 o'clock in the morning. And one turns to the other and says, "Look at that poor man working on vacation." And I said to myself, "Look at those poor schmoes. They're going to spend 51 weeks unhappy so they can come here for one week a year and escape." I said, "Wouldn't it make more sense to make difficult choices about why we're spending our time this way? What's important to us? Do I really want to be a millionaire? Or do I just want to tell people I'm a millionaire? Right? Because what would make a good life? What is my purpose? What am I keeping track of? Because if you make $30 million

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  and your family doesn't speak to you, I don't think you won. And I get that Goldman Sachs wants you to make $30 million, because that's the only way they get clients. But that might not be what you want. So let's get unentangled and clear. Tell the truth about the change we seek to make. Who's it for and what's it for? Because when we bring this intent to the work, we might fail, and we have to own that. Or we might succeed. But at least we're just not coasting along as a victim.

• 1:05:02Codie Sanchez?

  So this book and this conversation that we've had today, what do you hope that people get when they read The Knot? Like, when they're done, it's the last page. They've read through it. What will have changed in their life?

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  I tell a bunch of stories in the book about tuberculosis. And I tell stories about homelessness and mass transit. Big, big, big problems. And I talk about little, tiny, annoying problems, like who loads the dishwasher? And problems can be solved. Situations cannot. If you have a situation, accept it. Doesn't mean it's fair. Doesn't mean it's right. But that's not worth your time. Gravity? You're not going to be able to do anything about gravity. But if it's a problem, and you can solve it and make things better for yourself and other people, I hope you will. We're not going to run out of problems anytime soon. We are running out of optimism. We're running out of enthusiasm.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  We're running out of the ability to lean into the work. And I'm naive enough to think that maybe if I wrote a book about that, it would help.

• 1:06:07Codie Sanchez?

  Well, it's a beautiful book. Seth Godin, thank you so much for being here today.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  Thanks, Godin.

• 1:06:17Speaker 00

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