Category Archives: Seth Godin

Auto Added by WPeMatico

How to Build Game-Changing Strategy by Choosing Your Customers and Competition

How to Build Game-Changing Strategy by Choosing Your Customers and Competition written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

The Duct Tape Marketing Podcast with Seth Godin

In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marketing Hall of Famer and frequent guest, Seth Godin. A renowned expert in marketing, entrepreneurship, and strategic philosophy, Seth shares his invaluable insights once again on our show. With over 30 years of experience and multiple bestselling books to his name, Seth and I dive into my favorite topic—STRATEGY. In this episode, we explore how both businesses and individuals can transform their strategic approach for greater success.

In his latest book, This is Strategy: Make Better Plans, and a little anecdote about a chef, an electric car, and 30 years of veganism, he defines strategy as a philosophy of becoming and explains how understanding systems, the art of choosing customers, and competition can lead to long-term success.

Seth Godin challenges conventional strategy ideas, emphasizing empathy and awareness of the systems influencing customers and competitors. His thoughts on building sustainable, intentional strategies are a must-have for agencies, entrepreneurs and business leaders looking to stop running around in circles and make a meaningful impact.

 

Key Takeaways:

  • Strategy Is a Philosophy of Becoming: Godin explains that strategy isn’t just about following a step-by-step plan. It’s a forward-thinking philosophy that requires systems awareness and making intentional decisions that align with the change you aim to create.
  • Empathy is Key to Effective Strategy: Godin stresses the importance of empathy, not just kindness, in strategic decision-making. Understanding your customers’ needs and the systems they operate within helps businesses connect more effectively and create long-lasting relationships.
  • Choose Your Customers and Competitors: Godin highlights a critical but often overlooked aspect of strategy: businesses can choose their customers and competitors. By doing so, they can avoid commoditization and focus on serving those who genuinely value their unique offerings.

These insights from Godin highlight the power of a holistic, empathetic approach to strategy. He provides actionable guidance for entrepreneurs looking to outshine the competition and build lasting value.

Questions I asked Seth Godin:

  • [00:50] Define anticipatory customer experience…..

More About Seth Godin:

 

This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by:

Oracle

Nobody does data better than Oracle. Train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less, take a free test drive at Oracle.

Testimonial (00:00): I was like, I found it. I found it. This is what I’ve been looking for. I can honestly say it is genuinely changed the way I run my business. It’s changed the results that I’m seeing. It’s changed my engagement with clients. It’s changed my engagement with the team. I couldn’t be happier. Honestly. It’s the best investment I ever made.

John Jantsch (00:16): What you just heard was a testimonial from a recent graduate of the Duct Tape Marketing certification intensive program for fractional CMOs marketing agencies and consultants just like them. You can choose our system to move from vendor to trusted advisor, attract only ideal clients, and confidently present your strategies to build monthly recurring revenue. Visit DTM world slash scale. Brilliant. Here we go.

(00:50): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Seth Godin, teacher, author, and entrepreneur. With over three decades of experience inspiring people to level up and make a difference. He’s published 20 bestselling books translated into nearly 40 languages, including most recently, the Song of Significance, the Practice, and this is Marketing. Today we’re going to talk about a new book called This is Strategy, make Better Plans. It comes out dependent upon when you’re listening to this in mid-October of 2024, October 22nd, to be specific, he is a inducted into the Gorilla Marketing Hall of Fame, direct Marketing Hall of Fame, the Marketing Hall of Fame. And today I’m going to officially induct him into the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast Hall of Fame as well. So Seth, welcome to the show,

Seth Godin (01:47): John, like the actual duct tape, your podcast is really useful and it lasts. And last, thank you for having me once again.

John Jantsch (01:56): You bet. Been doing this for a while and I think that I’ve lost track, but this is at least your sixth appearance and I always enjoy it. Always look forward to it. Me too. So if I were to gather a panel of 10 people to put them in a room and ask them what is strategy? I know for experience, I would get 10 different answers. Maybe 12. Maybe 12. You’re right. And some of them would be nuanced. Some of them would just be flatrock. So I wonder if you could, at least for a baseline, what is your definit?

Seth Godin (02:29): Right. So that’s why I had to write a book and why it’s called This is Strategy. I want to answer that question. It’s not tactics, it’s not follow all the steps in the plan and then you’ll get your result. We need that. But that’s not strategy. Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. It is our awareness of the systems around us and our decisions that we make to use those systems to help us Cause the change we seek to make, it is an assertion about the future and it gets better if we talk about it.

John Jantsch (03:06): Sometimes I talk about how everybody has different notions of it and a lot of the confusion, I think people come by honestly. I mean Google the term marketing strategy and you will get said lists of tactics from what is supposed to be an authority. So I really get it. But your definition, a philosophy of becoming. Do you find that, while I think that is an amazing definition, do you find that people struggle with Can’t get my arms around that idea. I need something more tangible.

Seth Godin (03:38): For sure. That’s why it’s a book and not a blog post that people who have a strategy that is working look like they’re smarter than everybody else the same way. Good waves make a surfer seem better than they are. And our blindness to the available strategies is the main reason why we get stuck. And so there are countless examples and questions that we can go through to help us see what we couldn’t see before, and that once we learn to bring empathy to our work, everything about it gets easier.

John Jantsch (04:20): Yeah. So you jumped ahead of me. I was going to challenge you on the empathy word because quite frankly, I think a lot of times when people think about strategy, all they think about is how are we’re going to compete? And sometimes that doesn’t have a whole lot of empathy in it. So how should we be thinking rather than that limited view?

Seth Godin (04:40): Okay, so there is kindness and empathy, but I’m not making a kindness argument here. What I am saying is you might want to be the king of the world in charge of everything, but you are not

(04:53): That other individuals and organizations have agency, they can make a choice. And so when you wrote your breakthrough book about marketing, you wrote it in English that showed empathy for the reader you were seeking to serve because if you had written it in Czech, they wouldn’t have been able to read it no matter how much you insisted they do. So what we have to do is acknowledge that the people we are seeking to do business with, we are here to serve them. And they don’t know what we know. They don’t see what we see. And that’s okay. If we don’t go to where they are, they’re definitely not going to come to where we are. And that has to be built into our understanding of the choices and the systems and the decisions and the time as we compete because you don’t have to have pity for your competitors, but it really helps to have empathy for anyone who has agency.

John Jantsch (05:51): So again, in my world, probably to some extent in your world, although yours is a little broader, more diverse maybe in some cases, audiences, I talked to a lot of marketers and so when they think strategy, it’s a business strategy for gaining more customers or something along those lines. Would you also say, well no, this is something every individual needs to be thinking about. I mean, we all need people strategies.

Seth Godin (06:16): Well, from a very practical point of view, let’s start with the 17-year-old who lived down the street who I helped get into college, and he just made the most expensive financial decision of his life. It’s going to put him a quarter of a million dollars in debt. And he did it without a strategy. He decided to go to a place that isn’t worth the money and isn’t going to pay off because he was judging it on what did it feel like to visit the college campus and how will that window sticker make him feel? Well, if he had said out loud before he started, that was his goal. It would be coherent, but he didn’t say it out loud. It was intuitive. He didn’t really have a strategy. He was just stumbling in the dark. So we easily become the victim of a credit card company, the victim of someone in our life, in our family who isn’t engaging with us in a way that’s productive with our boss if we don’t have a strategy.

(07:19): So when I got out of business school, my strategy was super simple. I want to get a job at the fastest growing company that will hire me. I don’t care what they make because if it’s the fast growing company, I’m more likely to find a smart boss and I’m more likely to get exposed to interesting problems. And that two years will set me up for the next thing I want to do. And the person sitting next to me in class, their strategy was, business school is really expensive. I’m going to go work for the most prestigious, highest paying job I can get. And time demonstrated that I probably had a better strategy because the trajectory of my career over time was different. And so when we invest in time as we make these choices, whether it’s understanding what the admissions office wants or understanding what our partner wants or understanding what the customers for our locksmith company want, it’s all the same thing. It’s do we see the game? Do we see time? Do we see systems? And what moves are we going to make?

John Jantsch (08:27): So you mentioned system, so I was definitely going to go there as well. You talk about systems delivering value. I’ve gone as far as saying the system for many business is the strategy

Seth Godin (08:41): You’re using system I think a little differently than me. Tell me what you mean by system.

John Jantsch (08:45): When I created Duct Tape Marketing, I actually decided people needed a marketing system. And that if I could at least come in and say, look, here’s something we can do and we could repeat for a lot of folks and we’re going to install a system, which people were like, why didn’t I think of a system for marketing? That’s how I’m using it. And that’s been my body of work

Seth Godin (09:06): And that’s super important. But the reason you need one is you are trying to make a change in a system outside of your company and having a persistent tool inside your company is the only way to do it. So what are the systems we’re talking about an example I like to share how much should a wedding cost? And the answer is exactly what my best friend spent plus $20. And that’s why weddings cost a hundred thousand dollars. Now, the wedding industrial complex is a system, all these people in the system making decisions that if the system didn’t exist would seem absurd, right? But they’re not absurd because they are part of something. The healthcare system in the United States does not make health. It makes treatments. And there are all these, well-meaning people in the system, but they make decisions that don’t make any sense outside the system, but inside the system make perfect sense. So if we’re going to dance with any existing system, we need an internal system. So we can repeatedly do our work, but we better be able to see what the system in the outside world does in order to be able to make a change there.

John Jantsch (10:24): You make what I still, I’ve actually said this in various ways for many years, ports that you actually as a business get to choose your customers. And you have said that, and I think a lot of people are like, that’s completely wrong. That’s not how it works. The customer is always right. I just have to find enough people to give me money and whatever they want I need to create. And this notion of choosing your own customers to some people seems a little elitist almost is when it comes to business. But boy, is it a much more enjoyable way to do business.

Seth Godin (10:56): Yeah, well, this is a breakthrough and of course it’s elitist. You deserve that. You deserve to spend your days offering this thing. You’re offering to the people who will appreciate it and engage with you in a way that’s helpful. When you take anyone off the street, you have sacrificed your agency and vision for randomness. So David Chang’s a famous chef and he’s been in the news for many years. Before he was famous, he had a tiny restaurant in New York City called Momo Fuco and it hadn’t been reviewed yet. It only had 40 seats and you could sit at the counter. I don’t know how I stumbled on it is where my kids were younger, the four of us, my wife and kids would get in the electric car drive to Manhattan and go there for lunch on Saturday. And we would sit at the counter and I haven’t had meat in 40 years and I would say, I would like the Brussels sprouts.

(11:53): Please leave out the bacon that benefits both of us. You don’t have to waste the bacon and I can eat them. And the first three weeks we went, I loved it. And the fourth week, the guy behind the counter, I’m pretty sure it was David said, there’s a vegetarian restaurant a few doors down. I think going forward, you guys would be happier there. We put this on the menu, we like bacon, thanks for coming, but don’t come back. And that was the day in my book, he became David Chang because he said, I’m going to build a restaurant not for people who are hungry. There are countless restaurants for people who are hungry. I’m going to build a restaurant for people who want to see what David Chang wants to make. And you can do that in any line of work or you can be a commodity. Those are your two choices. If you want to be a commodity, you got to put up with whoever’s going to give you the money. But if you pick your customers, you can pick your future.

John Jantsch (12:52): I’m not sure if there’s the flip side or if this is actually to me an advancement of that same idea. You also talk about choosing your competition. And I think that one is in some ways even more brilliant because I don’t think anybody thinks about that idea. It’s like, no, this is who I compete with as opposed to, oh, this is the category I’m going to actually claim.

Seth Godin (13:13): Yeah, right. So a lot of your customers, John, actually want a job without a boss. There’s nothing shameful in that they’re freelancers at scale. They’re not entrepreneurs who are claiming an unfolding future. And so they find a category where they can put out a sign and wait for the customers to come. They’ve already determined who their competitors are. They intuitively picked. But if you decide that you are going to compete with scammers and spammers and people who are always fast talking and racing to the bottom, you’re either going to do that or you’re going to fail, right? You pick them that when you decide to be a plastic surgeon in Columbus, Ohio and there’s only one other plastic surgeon, your practice is going to be different than if you’re a plastic surgeon in Park Avenue in New York. You pick your competitors and then you pick the standards that your customers are going to measure you by.

John Jantsch (14:16): AI might be the most important new computer technology ever. It’s storming every industry and literally billions of dollars are being invested. Buckle up. The problem is that AI needs a lot of speed and processing power. So how do you compete without cost spiraling out of control? It’s time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud. Oracle Cloud infrastructure or O-C-I-O-C-I is a single platform for your infrastructure, database, application development, and AI needs. OCI has four to eight times the bandwidth of other clouds offers one consistent price instead of a variable regional pricing. And of course, nobody does data better than Oracle. So now you can train your AI models at twice the speed and less than half of the cost of other clouds. If you want to do more and spend less like Uber eight by eight and Databricks Mosaic, take a free test drive@ociatoracle.com slash duct tape. That’s oracle.com/duct tape oracle.com/duct tape immediately. What I thought of when I read that was even in the same business marketing consultants, choosing what you’re going to charge is a way to pick your competitors. There’s so much competition in this bucket. Let’s go over here.

Seth Godin (15:38): Exactly. That’s exactly right. Positioning is a generous model. It is not differentiation. It is saying to your customers, if you are looking for this is what I have. If you’re looking for that, let me give you the fun number of those people.

(15:54): And there’s a story, it may be apocryphal, I don’t think it is, of several of companies. Were trying to build big financial institutions, people like Fidelity, et cetera. And one of them did some research and discovered that 80% of their customer service calls were coming from 5% of their customers. And that these customers tended to have low balances. So they decided to write all of these people a very respectful letter saying, we don’t think we’re the place for you. We are having trouble serving this. Here are the phone numbers of three of our competitors. Please find someone who’s a better fit. Well, when you move those customers away, you freed up your entire customer service team and you’ve established your position in the marketplace, which is we are here for people of a certain kind of resource and a certain kind of question. And those people over there, that’s where you should go if you’re a different kind of customer.

John Jantsch (16:49): So when it really comes down to it, people who read books, love tools, they love like, oh, this philosophy of becoming is great, but what are the 40 questions that I need to ask in order to develop my own strategy? You happen to actually have that for us. So how did you decide on what that very curated list should be?

Seth Godin (17:11): Well, it’s not that curated because I could have had 40 different questions. It’s designed to prompt you down the path. And the way I did it was after I wrote the first draft of the book, I made 45 videos to become a Udemy course, which is in the world now. And then I had 350 people inside the purple.space community. I gave them access to the course for free and watched them do the course. And it was very cool to be able to watch other people have interactions about it. I could see where they were getting stuck and instead of me diving in and clarifying, I just clarified it in the book. And what I have found is it asking simple questions. Who’s it for? What’s it for? What is the change I seek to make? Who else has done this before me? What assets do I need?

(18:05): What do I need to learn? These are very straightforward questions that we avoid every day. And I know this because I spend time talking to friends about their projects. And when I bring up any of these questions, they get slightly anxious because left unsaid, you’re off the hook, left unsaid. Well, whoever needs it. But if you have to say it, then if it doesn’t come true, you’ve made a claim that you’re responsible for. But if you’re going to spend your limited days on this project, please say it to just two or three people. Say it to claude.ai, own it and see what other people say back.

John Jantsch (18:49): It’s funny, I work with a lot of organizations and I’m sure you have as well. You take one look at me, you’re like, well, it’s obvious what you need to do. And yet they have really brilliant people inside the organization that are like, oh my God, that’s brilliant. Why didn’t somebody tell us that? Why is it so hard for people that are in it every day to see strategy or even rather than just like, here’s what we do, phone’s still ringing. Keep churning.

Seth Godin (19:18): Yeah, well, so there are many differences between you and me. You are way more patient than I am.

(19:23): And that’s one of the reasons why I have never done a day of consulting in my life. Because in person, when someone hires a consultant, they often want them to solve their problem. And what you have the patience to understand is only they can solve their problem and your job is to create the conditions for them to see how to do that. But I have sat with people running for president. I’ve sat with people who are billionaires, people who run giant organizations, friends, and they have no clue what their strategy is. And if you point out what a possible strategy might be, you can watch their eyes light up and they realize someone just showed them a path when they thought they had to go through the woods. And then inevitably they get off the path and they go back to the woods because it’s hard to say no in the short run. So you can say yes in the long run, it’s easier to say yes to the urgency of right now and then have to dig your way out of a hole later. You have no choice. And so strategy is this affirmative action, this decision-making to say, I have the internal discipline to turn that down so I can do that instead.

John Jantsch (20:38): Yeah, that’s one of the brilliant things about having a clear view of what your strategy is. It actually helps tell you what not to do. Does it?

Seth Godin (20:48): Yeah. That’s actually the hardest part.

John Jantsch (20:50): And I think that’s what people are struggling, especially entrepreneurs are struggling with the most. There’s so many things they can do and there’s no filter for what they should do.

Seth Godin (20:59): So they end up doing mediocre this, mediocre this, but at least they did everything. So in my case, when Twitter showed up, I was early, could have had quite a big following on Twitter. And I said, but if I say yes to that, what am I going to do less of? Am I willing to become a mediocre blogger to become a pretty good twitterer? And I was like, no, that’s not my choice to be there. It’s my choice to be here. Let me focus on the thing that fuels my strategy as opposed to serving somebody who’s decided I would make them happier if I did that instead.

John Jantsch (21:37): Yeah. And as it turns out, you were so good, you ended up having a big follow on Twitter anyway without even participating there. It was amazing. No, brilliant. So would you say that one of the things that holds people back, call it mistake, call it a choice, is that generally speaking, especially a going entity, there is going to be some pain before there is gain to actually adopt a clear strategy because you’re going to have to invest. And it’s not a short-term effect.

Seth Godin (22:09): I think there’s already pain and you’ve justified the pain because doing your work and there’s going to be a shift for sure, there’s going to be taking a deep breath and saying, we’re not going to do that anymore. So there’s a lot of things to criticize about Jack Welch, but one of the smart things that Jack Welch did was their strategy is if we can’t be number one or number two in a category, we’re not going to do it anymore. So that’s why General Electric stopped making toasters

John Jantsch (22:41): Because

Seth Godin (22:42): They said, we can make a pretty good toaster and an okay return, but let’s just sell this toaster division and focus on someplace where we can win. That was painful, but it ended up, at least for a while, being a really smart move because being a meaningful specific is better than being a wandering generality that can fuel many strategy choices.

John Jantsch (23:05): So the last, I’ll end up here with a timing question. The last decade at least, I mean, I’ve been doing this 30 years. We didn’t have the internet in marketing when I started, right? I, so we can talk about how much has changed, but the last decade, I feel like as every coming decade, it just feels like the speed of change accelerates. So how big is a lot of times when people make a great strategic decision, it was just good time. So is there an element of luck to this? Because who knows what the next quarter’s going to bring?

Seth Godin (23:42): There’s a huge amount of luck. What we’re trying to figure out is how can you make the deck as stacked as you can before you have to pick a card? And the thing about change is this systems change when they have to, not when they want to. And what forces the system to change is a shift in communications information or technology because systems depend on those things to maintain their status quo. Well, guess what? The biggest systems change in history is happening right this second. And when systems confront the combination of climate and ai, they are going to be transformed. If you show up when a system is in flux and embrace what the system is about to become, it’s like being a surfer who gets a perfect wave, that learning to use the systems when they’re shifting to help the system get what it’s wanted all along, that two hours of work will pay off in 2000 hours of benefit. And this is the moment to do that.

John Jantsch (24:53): I said that was my last question, but then you opened up the whole box on what you’re doing on climate. We could do a whole show, I’m sure you have done entire shows. Can you give sort of a one minute invitation to people to find out more about the work you’re doing?

Seth Godin (25:08): So I volunteered for a year and a half full time and built the Carbon Almanac with 1900 other people. It’s at the carbon almanac.org and it is a judgment free book, 97,000 words, footnoted fact-check illustrated with cartoons. And you can look up anything that’s in it, and if you don’t agree, but you need to know, you need see and understand what is actually going on. Carbon in the air is invisible, but easily measured, and it doesn’t match the way we grew up in the world to imagine that the weather is just something that shifts back and forth. The climate is not, the weather and the climate is changing in a way that’s going to create 15 million refugees without homes in the next five years. It’s going to put American cities completely underwater. You don’t have to like it, but it’s happening. So the question is, what will we all do about it? And it’s going to be really hard to make that decision in 20 years, but if you know now what’s coming, it represents not just an urgency, but an enormous opportunity.

John Jantsch (26:20): Well, and if you think the wars over oil have been bad, which we see the wars over water.

Seth Godin (26:25): Yeah,

John Jantsch (26:26): We actually need water. We don’t really need oil. That’s going to be, I’m not sure what it’s going to be anyway, Seth, as always, I appreciate you taking a moment to stop on Duct Tape Marketing podcast. And I know people can find your books anywhere, but there any place you’d want to invite people to find out more about this as stretch?

Seth Godin (26:48): I built a page at Seth’s blog slash tis, and there’s some videos and links and other things there. We made this really fun deck that has 5 million combinations of prompts in it. Add a collectible chocolate bar, my first one ever with a trading card and everything inside. Very fun.

John Jantsch (27:05): Well again, appreciate you taking a moment to stop by and hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days again, out there on the road.

 

 

Creativity is a Choice and It’s Important

Creativity is a Choice and It’s Important written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Seth Godin

The PracticeIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Seth Godin, an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 18, 19, maybe even 20 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn). His most recent book, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, is available now.

Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!).

By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.

In 2013, Seth was one of just three professionals inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. In an astonishing turn of events, in May 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame as well. He might be the only person in both.

Questions I ask Seth Godin:

  • How do we get the work done?
  • What’s creative work?
  • You’ve said reassurance is futile – what’s that mean?
  • There is no such thing as writer’s block?
  • How are skill and talent related?
  • How is good taste a skill?
  • What is perfectionism for an entrepreneur?

More about Seth Godin:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

 

Zephyr logoThis episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Zephyr.

Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. The system is lightweight, easy to use, and incredibly fast. And with an array of beautiful themes to choose from, you can get your clients’ websites up-and-running quickly and with less effort. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop.

Zephyr is passionate about helping agencies create great websites for their clients. To learn more, go to Zephyrcms.com.

Tips of the Trade with Seth Godin

Tips of the Trade with Seth Godin written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Seth Godin

Seth GodinIn this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I interview Seth Godin, author, entrepreneur, and most of all a teacher.

Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 19 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn). His most recent book, This is Marketing, was an instant bestseller in countries around the world.

By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership, to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire countless people around the world.

In 2013, Seth was one of just three professionals inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame. In an astonishing turn of events, in May 2018, he was inducted into the Marketing Hall of Fame as well. He might be the only person in both.

Questions I ask Seth Godin:

  • About five years ago you jumped into podcasts, with Akinbo. Was that the first version or did you kind of evolve that or as it is today is that how it started?
  • So your podcasts, I find them to be deeply researched, of course, that may be your personal interest in reading and things that you cover. Do you batch them together? Do you do a month worth then you’re done?
  • What does it take for a book to breakthrough? Is it purely an audience or just an idea?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Insights into a successful podcast production
  • The difference between the homemade and the professional approach to media production
  • Where conferences will stand on being relevant in today’s world

More about Seth Godin:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!

Zephyr logoThis episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Zephyr.

Zephyr is a modern, cloud-based CMS that’s licensed only to agencies. The system is lightweight, easy to use, and incredibly fast. And with an array of beautiful themes to choose from, you can get your clients’ websites up-and-running quickly and with less effort. Or, if you’d rather build a custom site, Zephyr includes agency services to be your plug-and-play dev shop.

Zephyr is passionate about helping agencies create great websites for their clients. To learn more, go to Zephyrcms.com.

Transcript of How Human Connection Elevates Marketing

Transcript of How Human Connection Elevates Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Back to Podcast

Transcript

This transcript is sponsored by our transcript partner – Rev – Get $10 off your first order

John Jantsch: You’re never gonna get your message across until you understand the problems and the challenges and you empathize with those people that you’re trying to get the message across to.

In this episode of Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I am visiting with my old friend, Seth Godin. Everybody’s favorite marketer and we’re talking about his new book called, This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch and my guest today is Seth Godin. He is the author of 18 international bestsellers but I better check ’cause it may have changed by the time-

Seth Godin: It’s 19 now, ding, ding, ding.

John Jantsch: I knew I should have checked. And certainly to be translated in many, many languages, many of you listeners know that Seth’s been on when we talked about Unleashing the Ideavirus, maybe even Permission Marketing if we go back that long. Purple Cow Tribes. I’d run out of time if I list them all. But today we’re gonna talk about This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See. So, welcome back, Seth.

Seth Godin: Well, thank you. I think the keyword is, you said, “Another episode.” And your persistent generosity is the secret of marketing. So, bravo.

John Jantsch: Well, thank you very much. And again, I can spend five or six minutes talking about your generosity. But let’s get to the content, shall we? Let’s unpack this first element. Until you learn to see. What does that mean?

Seth Godin: Well, there’s two kinds of marketers. There’s the selfish marketers who are short term, short cutting narcissists. They are the ones who are getting in front of people because they want to market to them. And there’s the other kind of marketer. The long term player, the one who’s making a difference, who’s marketing with people. But you can’t market with them until you see them, until you know who they are, until you have the empathy to want what they want or at least, to help them get what they want. And too often, we’re in such a hurry ’cause we feel like we’re drowning that we forget to offer other people, a life vest.

John Jantsch: Yeah. And I work with lots and lots of very small businesses who, they wanna cut down trees and they wanna repair plumbing and things like that. And marketing is actually sort of a nasty thing that they feel like they have to do sometimes and I think the real challenge for a lot of folks like that is that they kinda just copy what they see so many other people doing even if it is wrong. I mean, how do you take somebody like that, that is essentially not a marketer, who says, “I’ve gotta market” but, you know, all the examples, that are, but, not all, but a lot of the examples that I see are teaching me the wrong things.

Seth Godin: Well, first I’d say, they are marketers. They might not be marketing on purpose but if you’re out in the world trying to make a change happen of any kind, you’re marketing, that’s what marketers do. And they, you know, I got a piece of spam from somebody, a week ago. It said, “Hi, I’m an intern from BYU. Can you please answer this survey for my company?” And there were so many elements of it that were clearly spam. And I had nothing better to do, so I wrote back and I said, “You know, you don’t have to do work you’re not proud of even when you’re an intern.” That it begins a pattern of saying, “Well, I’m just doing my job.” You don’t have to do that. You could do work that matters instead.

And the kid was sort of stunned and wrote me back a nice long note which was gratifying but my point was, if you wanna be a plumber, if you wanna be a tree surgeon, the fact is, you will be judged and you will be judged on how you treated our precious attention and you will be judged by how you kept your promises. And you will always be able to find someone who will go lower than you. Always. You wanna race to the bottom because the problem with racing to the bottom is you might win. The alternative is to say, “I know how I would like to be treated. I know how I would like to be seen and that’s the way I’m gonna treat other people.”

John Jantsch: You make it sound so logical.

Seth Godin: Well, you know, I’m not trying to make it sound easy but we see it everywhere. So, like, for example, the heating and boiling guy, the boiler repair guy came to my house yesterday. And even though we’d been working together for years ’cause stuff breaks, he insisted on putting booties on before he came into the house. And I said, “You don’t have to put booties on. We’re just going straight to the basement.” He said, “No, no. It’s a habit. This is the way I do it and it’s what I ask people to do before they come into my house.” And, so the book is basically a metaphor for, “Put your booties on.”

John Jantsch: So, I’ve believe at least, a great deal of this book is drawn from a project that you’ve been involved in for a few years, The Marketing Seminar.

Seth Godin: That’s right. It’s 6,000 people have taken this online, workshop takes about three months to go through and I had the privilege of watching people do it. Because, you know, you’re sitting like a pharmacist up at the top and you can see everything in the store. And, so I could see where people were getting stuck. I could see what resonated. So, once it came time to write the book, it wasn’t particularly difficult to write because I just built it and lived it for two years.

John Jantsch: And there were a lot of questions, right? And I’m assuming that you learned a great deal from not just where people got stuck but just the questions they asked and their answers.

Seth Godin: That’s right. We saw people have their lives changed and their businesses change because they were putting this into practice. And that’s what I do, I’m a marketer, I make change happen and I’m a teacher. So, seeing the lights go on, that’s what drove me to write the book. As I said, there’s a lot of people who will pay 600 bucks to take a seminar but I bet you, if I can give them this handy package, not only will they read it but they’ll share it with their peers.

John Jantsch: Because I think that’s one of the real challenges. In the last five years, you know, there’s 5000% more courses out there, from people and I think most course makers, seminar makers would agree that the real challenge is getting people to actually do it. And look at the way you structured this project, it really does compel people to complete it, doesn’t it?

Seth Godin: Well, so, yeah, I think it’s really important to distinguish between online courses and online workshops. Online courses are everywhere and I’ve made some. It’s a bunch of videos, it’s a different way to absorb content. And they’re fun to make but in my experience, they don’t lead to profound change. Change comes from when you actually do the work. So, what we do with these various workshops and seminars, you know, the altMBA has a 96% completion rate and that’s because it’s expensive and time gated and there’s a coach who’s watching you all the time. And there’s a peer group and a mastermind group.

So, people would missed if they were gone. And at the other end of the spectrum are self paced, come and go as you please kinda MOOCs. I think the opportunity we have, if we care enough to level up, is to put ourselves into a position where when it gets hard, and education always gets hard, we don’t quit. And so, for some people, that’s just get an audiobook instead of the regular one. ’cause the audiobook keeps turning the pages whether you want it to or not.

And for other people it’s, get a coach or get into a workshop where there are coaches because that is what they need to move forward. But, one thing we know for sure, if you’re over 25, there are no tests and there no grades. So, we need a better incentive than that to learn things.

John Jantsch: So, I’m curious. The etymology of MOOC. I’ve not actually heard that one before.

Seth Godin: Oh, it all started with this idea of the massive online course. What the second ‘O’, open, Massive Open Online Course. So, open because you don’t have to apply to get in. The famous one was the one out of Stanford on artificial intelligence. And a 105,000 people took it. And, what the professor who ran it said was that the 100 people who took it and got an A+ were better than any of the students at Stanford who took it. What he didn’t mention is that, 96,000 people in the course, dropped out.

John Jantsch: Or never started.

Seth Godin: Perhaps.

John Jantsch: So, I get asked this question a lot because I’ve been doing this a long time and you’ve probably been doing it longer than me. What’s changed the most about marketing? I always love people’s answers to this.

Seth Godin: What’s changed is really clear. Which is the marketer used to buy attention, cheap, that marketing was a bargain, that you spend a 100 dollars, you’d make 200. And the big change is attention is not cheap anymore. And as a result, marketers are racing to buy every little shortcut they can find and they’re getting trash attention, they’re getting trash clicks, they’re getting bots and trolls showing up on their doorstep.

So, Procter & Gamble and the big marketers can no longer buy their way to a new brand. It hasn’t been done in 10 years, it’s over. On the other hand, smart marketers are thinking like direct marketers now. They pay a lot for a little bit of attention but they take care of it and as they take care of it, they turn it into something valuable.

John Jantsch: I’ve been a fan of as I know you have as well. Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools.

Seth Godin: Sure.

John Jantsch: That he’s been doing for, probably coming up on 20 years and I know you’ve been a guest on there. And I found, you mentioned this in the book and I found actually an episode where you talk about Penguin Magic and I actually have taken note of the fact that you like magic shops, don’t you?

Seth Godin: Well, I don’t like the old kind anymore. Penguin Magic has spoiled me. But yes, I grew up going to magic shops. I love the tension of, “I just saw something, it’s impossible but of course the laws of physics apply so how could it be impossible? I need to know how it’s done. Oh, here’s some money. Now it’s mine.”

And there aren’t very many things in our life where we can get that cycle with no side effects for ten bucks in five minutes. It’s a thrill.

John Jantsch: And there actually are countless cases throughout history where people have actually killed other magicians and things to find their secret, haven’t they?

Seth Godin: I hope that’s not happening lately. If it is, we should tell Penn & Teller before it’s too late.

John Jantsch: So, there’s a bit in this book, current book about going out of business sales. And what they kinda do to us and maybe how they hurt us as marketers. You, kind of wanna expand on that?

Seth Godin: Well, the challenge that we have as marketers is everything that we would do to make something work in the short run isn’t what we should do in the long run. That is not true for any other profession. That what’s good for a surgeon in the short run is good for a surgeon in the long run. Add it up, keep going. The problem that marketers face is that the stunts and the shortcuts and the hustle, I hate the hustle most of all, is tarring us with this paint, this tar that won’t let go. And that’s why if I could invent a new word for marketing, I would.

Because, the good kinda marketing which is the marketing you talk about and that I talk about and the marketing that works doesn’t involve any of that hustle. But, the internet has brought the hustle to the fore and I think we’ve gotta figure out how to walk away from it as fast as we can.

John Jantsch: One of the words that you, I think are proposing, maybe that takes the place of marketing, is this idea of developing an empathetic posture. How do we do that?

Seth Godin: So, what’s practical empathy? It’s a simple idea which is, “You know something I don’t know. You believe something I don’t believe. You want something I don’t want. And you care about things I don’t care about.” So, if I’m gonna engage with you, sell to you, serve you, do business with you, either, I need to force you to think the way I think or I need to have the humility and the generosity to accept the fact that you think, the way you think and maybe I can help you.

But, too often, particularly small business people insist that they’ve worked very hard to get to where they are and they are right. And they’re not willing to move an inch toward what somebody else wants or believes. Or, it feels manipulative. And I don’t think it’s manipulative. I think that, if for example, you are somebody who sells draperies and blinds and you sell them in the suburbs, an upper income suburb, you might be the kind of person who doesn’t have any drapes and blinds in your house. You might be the kind of person that would just go to Kmart or Home Depot and buy the cheapest thing.

But your customer, she wants something that’s gonna make her feel special. And she’s willing to spend 800 dollars for it. If you can’t go to where she is, then you can’t help her. And if you think that where she is, is she wants to see a spreadsheet, an RFP, a comparison of A versus B, you’re not being very empathic. That what we get to do is to go to where people are and help them see what they wanna see.

John Jantsch: I read an article the other day that said from 2011 to 2017, 5000 marketing technology companies, apps, tools, whatever you wanna describe ’em have come on the scene. Is that phenomenon making this harder to do marketing the right way?

Seth Godin: Wow, I love that stat. I would have guessed it was even more than that. The thing is, the programmatic, the idea that you don’t know where your ads are running and a system is busy buying and selling everything behind the scenes makes a certain kind of of marketer happy because it lets him or her off the hook and it lets you buy a certain kind of demographic scale really fast. It’s hands free, it’s not human.

And particularly for a small organization, we need to run away from this as fast as we can. You cannot outdo Hyatt Hotels. You cannot outdo Google at this game. You just can’t, you have no chance. It’s like trying to win at the stock market by being a day trader. That, the place where you can win, where you have an enormous unfair advantage is that you can look a human being in the eye and you can say, “I made this.” And you can say, “I see you.” And you can say, “How will we together make something work?” That is where 10,000 times more than all this crazy software.

John Jantsch: Yeah, there are lot of small businesses that we work with, you know, that advertising kinda becomes a trap because it kinda works. But the bad part about it is then they don’t build a website that works and they don’t write content that works and they don’t do the things that I think, they long term are going to make or break their business.

Seth Godin: Yeah, let me just do a quick Google math so that people understand why Google is one of the most valuable companies in history. If you buy a Google ad, a Click for six dollars, knowing that it’s worth 20 dollars, that every time someone clicks, you’re gonna, on average, make 20 dollars in profit and you’re paying six, that’s thrilling.

But then your competition comes along and buys that Click for seven. So the question is, should you pay eight? The answer is, probably and an auction ensues until it’s at 19. Now, at 19, should you pay 20? Well, some people will say, “Yes, because I don’t want my competitor to get this person.” Some people will say, “No, that’s crazy.”

But, either way, at 19 dollars, here’s what’s happening. The person that did all the hard work, who makes the product, who does the warranty, who built everything makes a dollar and Google makes 19 dollars. Now, multiply that by every product and service sold by Clicks on Google and now you know what’s going on. They’re clearing the table of all the profit in every industry that touches them.

John Jantsch: And it’s, it’s gotten worse. The local service ads are making them actually be part of the transaction now, not just a click. But, you sold 4000 dollars, great, I get a piece of that. So, yeah, I think that trend’s not going away. So, stories are hot. They’re a big part of this book. People talk about them now. 15 years ago, people thought they were silly but now they talk about them. But I still don’t see many people doing or getting this idea of stories. How do you make storytelling a big part of your marketing?

Seth Godin: Well, this is another word that’s getting in the way, right? Because storytelling doesn’t mean “Once upon a time.” And “Lived happily ever after.” Story could be, what kind of handshake do you have? Story could be, is your office in a strip mall or in a fancy building? Story could be, when I look at the people who work for you on your website, do I see people who look like me?

These are all stories, stories in the sense that they’re symptoms and symbols that we use to guess about further behavior and meaning. And so, we all live stories and we can build those stories on purpose or we can let them happen to us. So, one way to think about the value of a brand or a story is this, if Nike opened a hotel and that’s all you knew, is it Nike has a hotel? I’m guessing, with your eyes closed, you could imagine a whole bunch of things about that hotel and you’d be right.

On the other hand, if Hyatt or Hilton made a pair of sneakers, you’d have no clue what they would be like. None. That’s because Nike has a story and Hilton and Hyatt do not.

John Jantsch: Great example. So, [inaudible]. We’re getting towards the end, so, here’s a softball you can hit out of the park for me. I don’t really think people want what we sell. What do they actually want?

Seth Godin: Right. They don’t want what we sell at all. They want the change and the status that it offers. They want belonging, they want security, they want to feel like they are part of something. If the Grateful Dead had never been invented, they wouldn’t have invented the Grateful Dead. But they would have invented something that made them feel the way the Dead did.

John Jantsch: So, you just gave me an example but my last question was gonna be, is there a company or two that you wanna point to and say, “Hey go check out what these people are doing because they’re doing it right.”?

Seth Godin: Here’s what I would say. Think, right now of a logo that you admire. Let’s say, you’re talking to a designer. Think of a logo. I’m going to bet you, 10 to 1 odds, that the logo you thought of is not a pretty logo but is in fact something that adorns a brand that you care about.

This brand you care about, why do you care about it? Why do you pay extra for it? Why do you cross the street to engage with them? So, you get to pick the example. I don’t need to. Because if there’s a brand you care about, it is a brand you care about because of the ideas that are in this book.

John Jantsch: Yeah, and that’s a great lesson because everybody has a brand or two that they care about so then you can personalize that and turn it into a learning lesson. Great, great advice.

So, Seth, what kind of people are gonna know, that are gonna be able to find This Is Marketing everywhere but is there anything you wanna share in terms of how they would connect with you, how they’d find out, maybe about joining the Marketing Seminar?

Seth Godin: I made a bonus page at Seths.blog/tim which stands for This is Marketing and I’ve got a video there and some bonuses and links to all sorts of juicy stuff as well.

John Jantsch: Well, once again, I really appreciate you stopping by and sharing your thoughts. Another great book. Congratulations and hopefully we’ll run into you soon, out there on the road.

Seth Godin: I hope so. Always a pleasure.

How Human Connection Elevates Marketing

How Human Connection Elevates Marketing written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing

Marketing Podcast with Seth Godin
Podcast Transcript

Seth GodinThis week on the Duct Tape Marketing podcast, I welcome back Seth Godin. A marketing expert and best-selling author of 19 books, Godin stops by to discuss his latest title, This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See.

He shares why creating empathy and human connection are not only the secrets to great marketing; they’re also the keys to doing work that you can truly be proud of—work that can change the world.

Godin has inspired millions of business owners and entrepreneurs and teaches the precepts of effective marketing and leadership in his books, on his blog, and through his public speaking. In addition to his writing and speaking, he is also the founder of two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne (acquired by Yahoo!).

Questions I ask Seth Godin:

  • What’s changed the most about marketing since you first started in the industry?
  • How do we develop an empathetic approach to marketing?
  • How do you make storytelling a big part of your marketing?

What you’ll learn if you give a listen:

  • Why today’s smart marketers are being careful with the attention they have.
  • How the hustle is destroying marketing.
  • What people actually want from a brand.

Key takeaways from the episode and more about Seth Godin:

Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please!