260. I Asked Seth Godin What He Really Think About Storytelling + My Origin Story

In a world that is continuously evolving and becoming increasingly complex, finding direction and meaning in our professional endeavors can be a daunting challenge. This is precisely what makes thought leaders like Seth Godin so invaluable. In a candid and enriching conversation between Seth Godin and Ash Roy, pivotal themes around storytelling, strategy, personal development, and finding one's path in an ever-changing landscape are explored. The insights shared in this dialogue offer not only profound wisdom but also actionable strategies for entrepreneurs and professionals alike who are striving for both success and fulfillment. Whether you're navigating the turbulent waters of career transitions or seeking to inject more purpose into your business journey, this exchange will equip you with the mindset and tools to forge ahead with confidence and clarity.

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00:00 Introduction: The Power of Stories

00:12 Understanding Money as a Story

00:35 The Influence of Metrics and Proxies

01:04 Choosing Your Customers and Future

02:14 Welcoming Seth Godin

02:39 The Importance of Stories in Strategy

04:51 Personal Story: A Journey of Resilience

09:06 Building a Community and Creating Value

22:29 The Role of Tension in Selling

28:14 Goal Setting and Developing a Practice

31:22 Conclusion: Choosing Your Customers

Ash Roy's and Seth Godin's Video Transcript (This transcript has been auto-generated. Artificial Intelligence is still in the process of perfecting itself. There may be some errors in transcription):

Seth Godin:

The world that we live in right now is richer and safer and more vibrant than it has ever been in history. But we are all telling ourselves a story, fueled by the media, that everything's going to end tomorrow. Money is a story, and it's one of many stories. And if it's not working for you, you should tell yourself a different story.

Story is not once upon a time. Our strategy is often based on the story we tell ourselves, on the story we seek to tell others, on the story other people tell themselves. Depending on which story you want to tell yourself, you will make different choices. If we get too focused on metrics that distract us from the point, the metrics take over, these false positives.

Proxies are easy to measure, but not relevant. Tragedies happen, bad things happen, and what we do with them is up to us. Part of what it is to earn money, find people who have a problem and are willing to spend money to solve it. You're never going to get paid fairly. Pick your customers, pick your future.

Ash Roy:

I'm delighted to welcome somebody I am proud and honored to call a friend, Seth Godin. We're here to talk about your new book, Seth, called This is Strategy. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Seth Godin:

Well, thank you. And thank you for always showing up the way you do.

It really matters and I appreciate it.

Ash Roy:

Seth, you've been a beacon, you've led with purpose and with a sense of ethics that really mattered to me. So, I wanted to open the conversation by talking about stories, because I think these are becoming increasingly important. And I've taken the liberty of pulling out a few quotes from some of your books, and maybe we can riff on them.

So, here's one about stories. This is from your book, This Is Strategy. Don't get caught confusing money with security. There are lots of ways to build a life that's more secure, starting with the stories you tell yourself, the people you surround yourself with, and the cost of living you embrace. Money is one way to feel secure.

But money alone won't deliver this. I'd love to hear your take on the importance of the stories we tell ourselves and the stories we tell our audience that then directs the business and the audience that we build and the work that we do.

Seth Godin:

What a great place to start. So, story is not once upon a time.

Story doesn't have to have a big climax or car chase in it. If you go out to an open house for real estate and the real estate broker has baked an apple pie, when you walk in and you smell that, that's a story. A story that reminds you of your childhood. If I put a two by four down on the floor and you walk along it, It's no problem, but if I suspend it a few feet off the ground, it's very scary to walk on it because we're subconsciously telling ourselves a story of risk or falling.

And our strategy is often based on the story we tell ourselves, on the story we seek to tell others, on the story other people tell themselves. And so, for example, the world that we live in right now is richer and safer and more vibrant than it has ever been in history. But we are all telling ourselves a story fueled by the media that everything is going to end tomorrow.

Depending on which story you want to tell yourself, you will make different choices. It's not easy at all to change the story we tell ourselves, but we can begin by working to change other people's stories, by working to tell a story. And then over time, we become what we do and so some of the happiest, most centered people I know are generous people, and they may not have a lot of money, but they are finding solace and resilience in the fact that they are woven into a community and helping other people.

That's available to all of us.

Ash Roy:

Seth, I wasn't sure if I wanted to talk about this, but I feel safe with you. I've only spoken to you once before, but I've been reading your content for years and I've come to trust you. I don't know whether I'm going to publish this story or not, but I want to share my story around how I discovered you and why I was so drawn and I'm still so drawn to your way of doing things.

So, I first came across. Your content in around 2012, I think it was called the startup school. And I discovered it on iTunes, I used to work across the road from the Sydney Apple store and a guy called Todd in the business team introduced me to Seth Godin startup school. Then I was very inspired by it.

And that led to me starting a blog and so on. Four years prior to that, my wife and I had been trying to have a baby. We'd left it till very late in our lives, which is not unusual for Professionals. My wife happens to be an obstetrician, gynecologist, and I was in finance at the time, you know, that my CPA and my MBA, and I was increasingly disillusioned with the corporate world because the closer I got to the top, the more flexible I found my scruples had to be.

I used to build these models and I was always asked to change the story the model was telling. And it just didn't sit well with me. So, this is back in 2008, 24th of November, our first son after six years of IVF was born premature. Unfortunately, he died an hour after he was born in our arms, and his lungs weren't fully developed.

And, you know, it was pretty brutal. He suffocated and, um, This, of course, happened in the very delivery room, the very room where my wife had delivered over a thousand babies and the irony of the fact that my wife had probably saved a hundred of them from dying, who then went on to blame herself, much to my frustration, for something that she had no control over.

The head of fetal maternal medicine was in the room, he was crying, and the maternity ward was in tears. And it all felt like a cruel joke at the time, you know, and the irony of it all was just not lost on me and it just made me question everything, including what am I doing with my life because this boy, our son had an hour on this planet.

And I had finished about 40 years of my life at that point 38 actually. And I had maybe 40 years at best. And they were asking us, do you, do you, we're sorry to ask you this but would you like to try and resuscitate your son? And of course, I didn't know the answer because I'm not a doctor, but my wife is. And between the two of us, I'm a lot less decisive.

I'm an analyst and, you know, you asked me, is it going to rain? I'd say, depends on the weather, but she's an obstetrician. She's very decisive. So, I said to her, I don't know what to do. And she said, well, I know what to do, but I can't say the words. And so, I said to her, okay, well, um, I'm sorry to ask you this, but what do you think his chances are of survival, and I'll make the decision.

It was very hard for me to do that, because I'm not a very decisive person. And she said, you know, whatever, 1 percent chance of him surviving, he had, his brain was deprived of oxygen, hypoxic and all that, and, uh, so I just said, okay, well, I'll make the call. I don't think we should resuscitate. Is that okay with you?

And she just nodded and we decided not to resuscitate the story ended. Well, we ended up having two more children both by IVF and we're very grateful for them. It's a miracle and you know life worked out well for us, but that was because of my wife's incredible courage for having gone through another four or five years and tens of cycles of IVF, each of which are grueling while working about 80 hours a week and training in obstetrics.

And, you know, imagine delivering babies through that whole process. It was just, she's, she's just a, there are many heroes I've come across in life, but she's one of them. And hey, we still argue like any couple and we still fight and everything, but, but I admire that this woman, you know, she's, she's, she's one of the few people I really, draw a lot of inspiration from so that's how I ended up in digital marketing

Seth Godin:

That's quite an origin story ash

Ash Roy:

And John Morrow who was my writing coach at the time suggested I use that as my origin story. I Asked my wife. Are you okay with this? And she said if you're asking me, I'm not comfortable, but it's your decision I just didn't want to do it because I didn't feel totally comfortable either.

And we're here in 2024 and I still haven't really shared it publicly. I still share it one on one. So maybe I will share it in this conversation because it, it just feels like the right time to talk about it. Yeah. That was the reason I decided to quit a very disappointing career in finance and strategy, which just seemed to be about more, more, more, faster, faster, faster, and.

And I just couldn't take it. I just was, you know, but that said, I moved into the digital marketing space. I worked very hard, but I am not a millionaire. And I see a lot of people lying about how much money they make. And there are a lot of revenue millionaires, but profit and revenue are completely different things.

Cashflow is yet another thing. It's not easy. I haven't given up yet. But a large part of that is because I've been watching you and taking a lot of inspiration from you.

Seth Godin:

Wow. Well, thank you for your trust and thank you for sharing that, you know, I I guess I would say a couple things about the story first, first sending your wife so much admiration and hugs.

There's no shame in anything that you just shared and it shouldn't feel that way. There was no error or mistake or misstep by anybody involved tragedies happen, bad things happen and what we do with them is up to us and I'm so sorry that you had to go through this and I'm thrilled that you went through this and found a path from it and you're certainly not using this tragedy as a way to grow your business, you're sharing it as a way to help other people see that there is no shame, what there is an opportunity. That we don't Know if we're going to get an hour or a year or a decade, we might as well do work that matters, and, um, one of the positive things about measuring income is it is in some cases a sign that you have created value for others.

One of the negative things is it might just be that you hacked the system. It might just be that you won some lottery and showed up in the right place at the right time. And if we get too focused on metrics that distract us from the point, the metrics take over. These false proxies are easy to measure, but not relevant.

And so some of the happiest, most engaged and productive people I know make 10, 20, 30 dollars a day and visiting with them, spending time with them in little villages was life changing for me. Because it helped me realize that money is a story. And it's one of many stories and if it's not working for you, you should tell yourself a different story

Ash Roy:

Our story took a little bit of a funny turn which i've forgot to mention before I decided to start writing in a blog and my wife she's a typical classic Surgeon, very technical.

And her response to what happened was she'd sort of, after an initial period of thinking of quitting obstetrics, and then being convinced by her seniors to stay, which was wonderful. It was their generosity that encouraged her to stay. She was obviously good at a job, but. they did whatever it took to keep her in the profession.

Anyway, I was doing these consulting gigs because I was thinking it was a matter of finding the right organization, right culture and whatever. And the gigs were getting shorter and shorter and the gaps between the gigs were getting longer and longer. And so, she says to me, what's going on? Like, and I said to her, look, the truth is I want to be a, I want to be a writer.

And she says, 15 years in finance and strategy, you've got a CPA, you have an MBA from the leading school in Australia with a distinction average, we're living off our savings, I'm on maternity leave with our third kid, and you want to start an effing website? What is wrong with you? The path is hard.

What's your advice to people who increasingly seem to be looking for quick fixes looking for, you know, the million-dollar overnight story, which is largely not an I wouldn't even say it's a myth. I think it's a lie.

Seth Godin:

Yeah, it's a lie. Two words shortcuts aren't the most direct path doesn't look like a shortcut.

The most direct path looks like a strategy based on incremental contribution and effort when NFTs showed up if I had Made every one of my blog posts into an NFT. I would have made a lot of money in two days and then my reputation would never ever have recovered, right? So, when do you decide to cash out?

Well, the problem with cashing out is the word out because then you're done the journey here is to chop wood and carry water and to do it on behalf of people who value that the argument in the book of the Smallest Viable Audience says, you we're not trying to find a shortcut to reach as many people as possible.

We're trying to find a direct path to matter to someone because if you can matter to someone, and they care enough to tell others, now you matter to two people, and then four people, and then eight people. And as Kevin Kelly has taught us, a thousand is enough. If Ash if you had your thousand true fans you will and your wife would never have to worry about monetization ever again there's no that's not a shortcut, but it's a path to the foundation that you seek to create.

Ash Roy:

Okay, let me respectfully Challenge that a little please do how does somebody who's I've got electricity bills to pay and all that sort of stuff Mm hmm. How do they pay their bills while building that smallest viable audience? And getting it to a point where it gets to a thousand true fans

Seth Godin:

Okay, so first of all, it depends on which bills you've signed up for if you have a requirement of a lifestyle that has a lot of zeros in it I think you need to go get a job doing something where somebody has already built a following and an Institution and they're going to have you do something you don't want to do and that's why they're going to pay you to do it.

They're taking the risk. You're putting in the effort. I remember spending time with a spiritual leader in a little village and he had 40 people who came every week to be part of his community. That was enough to pay his bills. If you are in New York City and you decide to spend every Saturday connecting people in a community in a way that that connection is useful to them, you can't quit your day job right away, but if that connection is useful enough, then you'll be able to do it on Mondays as well, and you'll be able to do it on Wednesdays, and you can build a thing.

Part of what it is to earn money is to find people who have a problem and are willing to spend money to solve it. This is a key part of determining a strategy. Which is if you show up and you say, I have this great skill in teaching Girl Scouts, how to sell Girl Scout cookies, you're never going to get paid fairly because Girl Scout cookie leaders don't have money to pay a trainer to teach them how to sell Girl Scout cookies.

That's a bad strategy. On the other hand, it turns out that there's 300 CFOs in Sydney, Australia, who are a little lonely because they can't talk to their boss. They can't talk to their co-workers. They can't talk to their employees. They would love to be part of a circle of CFOs where they can talk about things of mutual interest.

If you can organize that group, I have no doubt you can make a living doing that, right? And so, this idea that says they're disconnected people, we'll have a problem who have resources, we need connectors. AI isn't going to solve that problem, you could get AI to work for you, but you're not going to be a cog.

You're going to be the creator of the system. So, there are countless places we can do that, some of them take longer than others, some of them are more attractive than others, but it's still, if you've got to pay the bills, you need to find someone who has a problem right now, who's willing to pay money right now to solve the problem.

Ash Roy:

Yep. I want to quote. Something from your book from this is strategy on business growth. You talk about finding 10 people that love your product and, you know, they'll tell their friends and they'll tell their friends, which is what we've just been discussing, but I really liked this quote. He say, when you serve the smallest viable audience, your idea spreads, your business grows not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.

Can you tell us a bit more about that last bit? What do you mean by faster than you could ever imagine?

Seth Godin: One day the phone will ring, or the email box will bing, and it will be a note from somebody you don't know. And that person will be reaching out to you not because you ran an ad. They will be reaching out to you because you created the conditions for them to come to realize that you can help them and once it happens once it might happen again and if the conditions are right, it will happen a lot of times it's hard for people to imagine that because what we've been trained in the legacy of the tv world is, you need to go spend money and hustle and maybe you'll get something back And what I'm saying is if you put in the hard work to create the conditions for something to occur And you do it, right something will occur

Ash Roy:

Okay, you said the word hustle and there's another little quote I've got here, which I think it's perfect.

Perfect segue. Effective marketing isn't about hype or hustle or even getting the word out. Instead, it focuses on engaging with people who seek to engage with us. Our job is to find a resilient path forward by helping people get to where they hope to go. That is so different and so rare. And this is one of the reasons I'm such a big fan of your approach because it is so different to what I see most marketers doing, which is hammer people over the head with your message and spam the living daylights out of them till they succumb.

And most people won't, they'll just mark you as a spammer and your reputation is trash. So why, why aren't more people? Seeking to enroll, as you often say, to enroll their audience and instead trying to bully people into doing what they want.

Seth Godin:

So, I don't know what it's like in Australia, but if you go to the gym in January, it's very crowded.

And by March, it's empty. Because all these people are eager to sign up if they could get in shape and lose the weight in a week but the long haul is challenging because the culture pushes us to believe it's not just personal appearance or cosmetics, it's business, it's spirituality. It's all of it, right for centuries. You could make a donation to the pope and he would hand you a paper saying this is the short line to get into heaven, right that the whole idea is built deep into our culture?

I mean like, you know Warren Buffett, is Buffett is the patron saint around the world of capitalism if you do the math it turns out that Warren Buffett's results are most directly related to the fact that he did it for 20 years longer than anybody else.

Ash Roy:

Correct He's made most of his wealth in recent years

Seth Godin:

Right.

If you leave out the last 20 years, which is when any normal person would have retired, he's just average, right?

Ash Roy:

It's compounding.

Seth Godin:

Exactly. And so that's what we're seeking to do is find a thread where you can make a difference and then slowly and gently pull out in that thread, creating a community, a vibrant one that you dance with and dance it with you.

And there are a million, a billion places to do that. And you don't want to pick the shiny one. Yes. Kim Kardashian made a billion dollars, but we're not, we don't need the next Kardashian. We already have one. When someone is eight and a half months pregnant and comes to see your wife, she doesn't have to persuade them to have a baby.

They're going to have a baby. Right, and they're happy to pay her to make it go better and that's the kind of professional interaction we are looking for is that there's somebody who has a burning problem or desire and money to spend to deal with it if we can be in that room as the best trusted option, they will happily demand to give us the money because we can make their problem go away

Ash Roy:

I'm, really glad you highlighted that because I have a tendency, I think, to, I don't know, maybe undersell myself or understate my skills or my ability and I do notice that a lot of people tend to do this and there's apparently a direct correlation between your, the level of education you have and the imposter syndrome thing.

So how does one say that I am your guy? Without coming across as arrogant.

Seth Godin:

Well, okay. So first, of course, you feel like an imposter because you are one and so am I Anyone who is doing important work is an imposter because you're hypothesizing Something that might happen, but you've never done this exact thing So that is what it is to do creative work, right is to say I can help you with X, even though your particular problem is unique.

So, I can't prove that I've done that exact thing before. I'm going to assert this, but leaving imposter syndrome aside, the reason it's hard is you must willingly inflict tension, generously create tension. And this is what makes actual selling difficult. So, one of the first things I did in my career was a book called The Select Guide to New York Law Firms.

And it's too long a story to go into all the detail, but the short version was this book is going to go to 15, 000 law students around the country for free. And it's going to list the top law firms, two pages of each in New York City to make it easier for you to recruit these top law students, because you have a big problem, which is it's very expensive for you to get the top law students.

And if you don't hire the top students, your firm's future is in jeopardy. And your job is you're the head of recruiting at the law firm and you have a budget and you have to get these students. So, I show up and I say this book's going to 15, 000 students and I already have these firms in the book do you want to be in? It now that statement creates tension

Because now that woman has to go to her boss and get two thousand dollars to be in the book and she has to worry that if she doesn't get that or doesn't go to her boss, her boss is going to say why didn't you tell me about this book? We're not in it so the tension is do you want to be in it or not be in it?

And the value is obvious, which is this is worth $50, 000 if it works, and if it doesn't work, it only costs you 2000 and there's a money back guarantee. So, it's a fair offer. We weren't eager for me to call you to tell you this because I created tension. Once the tension is released by you sending me $2, 000, your status goes up because now your boss is happy that you got us into this book, which is the Best Law firms in New York.

So, my contribution was connecting law firms to law students, but my work was creating tension.

Ash Roy:

Okay Now i've never understood this tension thing until you just explained it that way. That was fantastic. Thank you. If I as the founder of this membership program for which I do charge money We're a group of small business owners I've been building a community for the last six years and it's just a handful of people but it's a highly trusted environment and it's a real joy to be part of that community.

I think all of our members feel the same way. You know, we show up twice a week to work together and we have a mastermind call twice a month, we just have a catch up on a Friday evening. And it's just really nice. I struggled to sell that membership. How would I go about creating tension? So, the problem that this membership is offering to solve is the CFO thing you were saying earlier, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs and business owners feel lonely.

We offer that community. It's a sounding board. We have some content, but we're not all about just content. We're about, you know, peer support. So how would I create tension for my audience without being salesy about it?

Seth Godin:

Here's the story of Joe Mancuso. I needed to license the right to something. So, he had a book and I found it and I called him up.

He said, sure, you can have that. And I said, what do you do for a living? And Joe explained to me what he did. He created these circles. And the way the circle worked was there are 12 people in a circle. You had to be the CEO of a company between one and 4 million in sales. Each month the circle met at a different person's office at the month It was yours The 11 people would come to your office they would spend the morning going through your books and talking to your senior people And then they would spend the afternoon ripping you to shreds about what you needed to do to do better and then the next 11 months you would do that for everybody else and it cost three thousand dollars and in 1988.

I didn't have a lot of three thousand dollars piles of money but he said I will recommend you to a group which currently has 11 people in it they decide if you're going to get in or not

Ash Roy:

with or without the three thousand dollars

Seth Godin:

No, I get the three thousand dollars back if I don't get accepted, But if I get accepted I have to pay three thousand dollars

Ash Roy:

and is that every month or just a one off?

Seth Godin:

No, a year. So, I get in and it's an interesting experience. We can talk about it another time, but it turns out Joe has 40 of these circles. So, I'll let you do the math in 1988 money. He has 40 of these circles of 12, each paying 3, 000 to him, right? And the tension was, I'm not sure I'm going to get in. I'm not sure they're going to like me.

I'm not sure I'm good enough to be here. The tension is I could just blow it off, but then I'll be hiding I could just blow it off, but then if my business struggles it's because I didn't get advice from these 11 people, there's all of this tension that was created when Joe offered me the chance to be in one of these limited circles right and the magic of how he set it up is there was always room for another 12 But each circle was finite so the scarcity was real, right?

And he honestly felt like he was doing a service to each for each of us. Cause anyone could have done it on our own, but none of us did. Right, And the people who were in it, some of them are probably still in it and it didn't match what I needed. So, I left after a year, but other people, it was exactly what they needed.

But no one in that whole situation was an imposter. And no one in that whole situation was hustling anybody. It was simply, I'm going to create tension to get you to do the same way they say you should get a flu shot. Well, the second sentence is, because if you get the flu, you might die. That's tension.

And the doctors don't feel bad about saying it because it's true.

Ash Roy:

Okay. I love that. That I'm just conscious of the time. There's so much more I wanted to talk about, but I'll, I'll jump to something that is I think it's very important because this gets talked about a lot on our YouTube channel, goal-setting.

So, in your book, this is a strategy you say, not all players follow the same rules or have the same goals, even when they're playing the same game. And then in the book, the practice, you say, we live in an outcome focused culture, a short-term focus on outcomes means we decide if a book is good by its bestseller rank.

A bit further on is outcomes are the result of process and good processes repeated over time lead to better outcomes than lazy processes do. Now, I agree wholeheartedly. We are a goal obsessed culture. But I will add that that tends to be very urban slash western focused. I grew up in an Eastern culture, I grew up in India, which is a very different dynamic.

And even the economy is quite different. It's not as driven by outcomes. There's a lot more belief in process and someone can go into philosophy another time, but what's your take on goal setting? Where do you see goals fitting into a business owner's journey?

Seth Godin:

Right. So, you're talking about Developing a practice.

My daily blog is a practice. There isn't a goal associated with it. There's the practice of I get to do this tomorrow. Can I do it even better? Where goals are really helpful is they can act like a compass when the terrain changes, when the system shifts, the goal can be our North star and say, okay, I needed to change my practice.

Why? Because my practice isn't getting me closer to that. I want to go closer to this, right? And so if your goal is to make three million dollars, great. Okay. I got that what's your practice that's going to incrementally create value, which will lead to an asset, which will create value, which will lead to an asset.

Now, if it turns out that those assets you've been building, right. You have a small cable TV channel. Oh, cable TV channels are worthless. Now you need to build a different practice. If you want to get to that goal, you said you had. So, we don't want to change our goals very often. We don't want to change our practice very often.

But sometimes we have to change one or the other because the world has shifted

Ash Roy:

And you know what Seth this was exactly what led to my catharsis back in 2012 because What I came to realize was that I was building these financial models It's complicated excel spreadsheets for the CEOs or the direct reports, but the CEO was typically speaking to an audience of one or two and that was an analyst who was looking at quarterly results of a large corporate that you couldn't possibly decide the fate of based on whether they missed their revenue guidance by one cent or not.

But the CEO was forced to just manage short term expectations in a very myopic way because investment banking, institutional investing system is all geared towards this myopic short-term thinking.

Seth Godin:

But this is a really good way to put a ball around our entire conversation, which is the riff in the book that says, pick your customers, pick your future, that the bold and generous thing you did with your wife's support was you said I don't like my customers. I don't like their goals. I don't like their practice so I'm going to find a different set of customers because that will change my day that will change my soul and that will give me a chance to contribute we too often just fall into who our customers are and that's a mistake, if you're not firing customers you're not serious about choosing your customers and you know with the carbon almanac One of the biggest contributions I had to make once it got started was saying to some people in the community, please don't come back because you being here as a volunteer is going to undo so much of what we're trying to do.

So, with full respect, there are other things I would hope you would do, but not here. Thank you very much. And we need to be able to say that to our customers, our partners, our distributors, because otherwise we're giving up our agency. And our practice,

Ash Roy:

You know, you said that in our last conversation about leadership and the importance of saying no Being an important part of leadership, you know, I would love to talk again if you're open to it I know you're a busy man, but I just love these conversations

Seth Godin:

You make me better every time I see you and well, we've only had these conversations in this format.

We talk all the time electronically and the people in your circle are very lucky to have you and I hope you'll give your whole family. Thank

Ash Roy:

Thank you Seth, you’re so kind.