Transcript

#472: Fear LESS, Plan MORE, Achieve BIG with Seth Godin, ​​Founder of the Carbon Almanac, Blogger...

From Heather Monahan · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 55 min · 9,836 words · 56 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "#472: Fear LESS, Plan MORE, Achieve BIG with Seth Godin, ​​Founder of the Carbon Almanac, Blogger...", an episode of Heather Monahan published October 22, 2024 (55 min, about 9,836 words). It mentions 48 people, works and ideas, including Empath, Google LLC, This Is Strategy, Purple Cow, The Practice.

What this episode is about

Seth Godin discusses the importance of strategic thinking in a rapidly changing environment, emphasizing that speed is irrelevant if one is not heading in the right direction. He reflects on his extensive experience and the insights from his latest book, which serves as a guide to developing a clear strategy for meaningful impact and success.

Key takeaways

  • Strategy isn't a sprint; it's a GPS. Rushing blindly leads nowhere fast. Find your direction first.
  • Empathy is the essential compass in strategic thinking; it's about others, not just tasks.
  • Today's choices exceed our grandparents': embrace decision-making as a philosophy, not a roadmap.
  • Start talking strategy: words articulate purpose and prevent directionless drift in a noisy world.
  • Ignoring the 'irrelevant others' isn't selfish—it's focus. Serve those who truly resonate with your mission.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Bangalore, Permission Marketing, Purple Cow, The Dip
  2. – 10:00: demographics, psychographics
  3. – 15:00: Purple Cow, The Four Agreements, 60 Minutes, David Copperfield
  4. – 20:00: NetSuite, Arlo Guthrie, Newport Folk Festival
  5. – 25:00: General Foods, General Mills
  6. – 30:00: The Carbon Almanac
  7. – 35:00: Facebook, Instagram
  8. – 45:00: Google LLC, The Practice, This Is Marketing, This Is Strategy
  9. – 50:00: Google LLC, Yahoo Kids, Artificial Intelligence, Forbes 400
  10. – 55:00: This Is Strategy, DOR Becker Children's Hospital, seth.blog

Notable quotes from "#472: Fear LESS, Plan MORE, Achieve BIG with Seth Godin, ​​Founder of the Carbon Almanac, Blogger..."

  • Permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book this is strategy we're going to get into that today it's an essential…
    about This Is Strategy · at
  • Phrased that way specifically for okay so if there's someone in the Czech Republic or Bangalore who says Heather's podcast is stupid because I don't understand it's not in my…
    about Bangalore · at
  • Much with saying no to people that I feel like I could help well we're confusing psychographics and demographics I don't care very much about demographics what someone looks like naked isn't important right who their.
    about psychographics · at
  • It's not and I need to shift and try something different right so this starts us down the road of the smallest viable audience that when Oprah first put her show on the number…
    about smallest viable audience · at
  • Their status would go up so I offered them a tool that would help them get to where they want to go so A Book Like The Four Agreements how has it sold millions and millions of…
    about The Four Agreements · at
  • 37,251 37,000 that's the number of businesses which have upgraded to netsuite by Oracle net Suite is the number one Cloud Financial system streamlining accounting financial management inventory HR and more All For You 25 net site turns 25.
    about NetSuite · at
  • Me so I try not to do that too often but you know if we go back a little bit when Google launched Gmail you may recall that you couldn't get in unless you had an invitation from someone who was already using it that was a brilliant.
    about Google LLC · at
  • Much we want people to come to Yahoo and stay at Yahoo so we have Yahoo finance and Yahoo weather and Yahoo kids and Yahoo this and Yahoo that so we want one click to turn into…
    about Yahoo Kids · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Arlo Guthrie — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Next I want to bring my friends your gig wasn't that good right if you know when we think about Arlo Guthrie the Beloved Arlo Guthrie how did Arlo Guthrie become famous partly…
  • Chris Cain — Person · 1 mention
  • Christa Tippett — Person · 1 mention

Books & papers

  • This Is Strategy — Book · 4 mentions · first at
  • Purple Cow — Book · 3 mentions · first at
    Today for you his breakthrough books include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book…
  • The Practice — Book · 3 mentions · first at
    Include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book this is strategy we're going to get…
  • This Is Marketing — Book · 2 mentions · first at
    Include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book this is strategy we're going to get…
  • The Four Agreements — Book · 2 mentions · first at
  • Unleashing the Idea Virus — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Value he's adding and he's adding it today for you his breakthrough books include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice…
  • Permission Marketing — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Today for you his breakthrough books include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book…
  • Tribes — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Today for you his breakthrough books include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book…
  • The Dip — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book this is strategy we're going to get…
  • David Copperfield — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Over again right that the things that work ever since you know kind of Blue Miles Davis or all the way back to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens they work because they…
  • The Carbon Almanac — Book · 1 mention · first at
    Now that AI is come into your world the biggest shift in my daily life after I worked on the carbon Almanac as a volunteer year for a year and a half is I stopped flying so my…
  • Linchpin — Book · 1 mention
  • War and Peace — Book · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

  • Google LLC — Company · 6 mentions · first at
  • IBM — Company · 3 mentions
  • TED — Company · 3 mentions
  • NetSuite — Company · 2 mentions · first at
  • Duncan Hines — Company · 2 mentions
  • 60 Minutes — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Million readers without hassling anybody without being written up in the New York Times without being on 60 Minutes drip that is the way all ideas grow all movements grow Sigma…
  • General Foods — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Having a job and so keep making food convenient was a 60-year long strategy for General Foods General Mills Duncan Hind and the rest of them every time you made food more…
  • General Mills — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Having a job and so keep making food convenient was a 60-year long strategy for General Foods General Mills Duncan Hind and the rest of them every time you made food more…
  • Facebook — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Platform it even lets you sell across social media marketplaces like Tik Tok Facebook and Instagram packed with industry leading tools ready to ignite your growth Shopify gives…
  • Instagram — Company · 1 mention · first at
    Platform it even lets you sell across social media marketplaces like Tik Tok Facebook and Instagram packed with industry leading tools ready to ignite your growth Shopify gives…
  • Kaiser Permanente — Company · 1 mention · first at
    For so if you want to change the Health Care System you could pick it outside of Kaiser Permanente and say they are wrong they should make Health instead that's probably not…
  • DOR Becker Children's Hospital — Company · 1 mention · first at
    A new kind of Hospital crib and instead of just launching it he went to the nurses at the DOR Becker Children's Hospital in Cleveland and he said here's a crib here's some…
  • seth.blog — Company · 1 mention · first at
    It goes back to it goes fear again it really does so where can everyone get this strategy so at seth.
  • altMBA — Company · 1 mention
  • HarperCollins — Company · 1 mention
  • Yo-Yo Dyne — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

  • Yahoo Kids — Product · 2 mentions · first at
  • Go-Gurt — Product · 2 mentions
  • Yahoo Finance — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Weird place people don't like it that much we want people to come to Yahoo and stay at Yahoo so we have Yahoo finance and Yahoo weather and Yahoo kids and Yahoo this and Yahoo…
  • Yahoo Weather — Product · 1 mention · first at
    Much we want people to come to Yahoo and stay at Yahoo so we have Yahoo finance and Yahoo weather and Yahoo kids and Yahoo this and Yahoo that so we want one click to turn into…

Concepts & topics

  • Empath — Concept · 7 mentions
  • healthcare system — Concept · 2 mentions
  • psychographics — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • demographics — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Feel like I could help well we're confusing psychographics and demographics I don't care very much about demographics what someone looks like naked isn't important right who their parents were isn't important I care.
  • smallest viable audience — Concept · 1 mention · first at
  • Artificial Intelligence — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    People leave and it turned out to be brilliant and now when artificial intelligence shows up and chat GPT and perplexity and Claude each one of them has a different strategy…
  • Opportunity cost — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Familiar of all I was thinking of is yet again it's back to fear and looking at the opportunity cost that people are losing out on still just driven by fear back to your point…
  • Forbes 400 — Concept · 1 mention · first at
    Ecosystem to make more money but he already had money why was he doing this because the Forbes 400 game of I'm winning is the game the only game they know how to play so I'm…

Places & events

  • Bangalore — Place · 1 mention · first at
  • Newport Folk Festival — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Guthrie become famous partly because his dad was super famous that got him invited to the Newport Folk Festival he performed for 15 people two hours later they dragged him to a…

Sponsors

Full transcript with timestamps

hi and welcome back I'm so glad you're back here with me this week you know it is very rare that I have a guest on multiple times but today we are in for a treat we've got Seth Goden back on the show again and we've got a lot of stuff to talk about because a lot has been happening I mean he's the author of 21 International bestselling books he changes the way people think about marketing his books been translated done for 38 languages I mean this is incredible what he's created and the value he's adding and he's adding it today for you his breakthrough books include unleashing the idea virus permission marketing Purple Cow tribes the dip lynchpin the practice this is marketing his newest book this is strategy we're going to get into that today it's an essential guide to thinking strategically in a complex Ever Changing world he writes one of the most popular daily blogs in the world and has

given five TED Talks I thought it was big that I gave one he's the founder of the alt MBA the former VP of direct marketing at Yahoo and the founder of the pioneering online startup yo-yo DME Seth thank you so much for being here today it's a pleasure how have you been Heather I have been great but I'm excited to get into this I'll tell you um first of all strategy is an elusive thing as you know myself included in this busy world that we live in where it's like you're just trying to get things done oftentimes I know for myself strategy is the one thing I kind of dropped the ball on so why did you write a whole book about it you know it doesn't matter how fast you're going if you're going in the wrong direction and there are all these people online trying to tell you to go faster and faster and faster and this hustle and this tactic and this technique and this microphone but it might be worth

spending an hour or two having a conversation about where you're going and why who are you here to serve what's the change you seek to make because if you do it with the systems in our world it's a lot easier than if you do it against them that is well said and I really appreciate the reminder um how do you define strategy in the context of the book strategy is a philosophy of becoming it's not a promise it's not a map it's not a plan if you follow all the steps you'll definitely get the outcome instead it's how we make decisions it's our ability to see time to have empathy for the people we're connecting with it is an entire basket filled of choices that our grandparents didn't have to make CU they just had a job they just did what they were told but every one of us gets tomorrow over again and how you decide to spend it is one of the most important decisions you can make so where are you suggesting people

begin to make this something that they can actually incorporate into their daily lives well the the first step is the hardest one which is having the guts to talk about it to be able to say to someone it's not an intuitive strategy I have a way to describe it so I'll give you an example uh a few years ago I got hired by a financial institution to interview all these famous people and one of the people I interviewed was a very well-known fashion designer and I don't know a lot about the fashion industry so I read their two autobiographies read both of them and I came with all these detailed thoughtful questions and after about 2 minutes it was clear that not only hadn't this person read their autobiography no not only hadn't they written their autobiography they hadn't even read it either one they hadn't done either one they had no clue they were just intuitive they got lucky early so they did it again and then they did it

again but when the world changes the luck runs out because you haven't talked about it you're not resilient so that's the first step is to talk about it then what do we say well I want to know who exactly are you here for because that tells me all the people you're not here for who you should be ignoring and then I want to know what is the change you're seeking to make because if you're not trying to make a change happen why are you wasting our time and so if we can be very clear about that then we can ask some honest questions about whether those people want to be changed and whether the system is going to help us connect and lead or whether we're always going to be drowning what do you mean by who we should be ignoring I've never heard it phrased that way specifically for okay so if there's someone in the Czech Republic or um Bangalore who says Heather's podcast is stupid because I don't understand it it's not in my

language you should ignore those people because your podcast is only for people who speak English right let's extend that a little further right if I am doing a a project where I'm teaching people woodworking using hand tools and someone marches up and says what are you doing should be using an electric planer in a band saw I can say it's not for you and we can get more and more specific if you go to a fancy restaurant and say this is ridiculous it's so much more expensive than McDonald's they shouldn't argue with you they should say McDonald's is right down the street thanks for stopping by so people like us do things like this what are the things like this who are the people like us and it's not what you look like it's what you believe right for people who believe blank I am here to give you blank and if you're not willing to say that you're always going to be frazzled because the false proxies you're measuring your

YouTube likes or your followers whatever are going to confuse you because the easiest way to be popular on social media is to do something that you're not proud of that just makes your numbers go up but that's not why you're here what something you just remind me something when I wrote my second book with the first time I wrote self-published I did whatever I wanted right and so I just wrote for whoever I thought I was speaking to and I didn't get really granular to what you're saying right however my second book was with Harbor Collins leadership and they are very much in charge of what you're doing and they were very much like what you're saying se you know no Heather you cannot write for men and women no you can't write for this massive audience but I want to and I know that you I know you don't like this I I get it people tell me I'm wrong all the time I want to help anybody that needs help that could

be I don't care if you're a man I don't care if you're a woman I don't care if you're in this industry or that one or you're at this age or not so where is it that I'm missing because I struggle so much with saying no to people that I feel like I could help well we're confusing psychographics and demographics I don't care very much about demographics what someone looks like naked isn't important right who their parents were isn't important I care about what they believe so if someone walks into a bookstore and goes to the self-help section they're already announcing what they believe they're the kind of person that thinks a self-help book can help right and if your editor is pushing you to say no no no make sure you include stuff for people who hate self-help books you should say this is not for those people that is the kind of niching up I'm talking about being very clear about the beliefs and

desires of the people we seek to serve so let's talk about systems for a second and I I'll start with weddings how much should a wedding cost right now the person and and what type of wherewithal they have to spend well but if the goal of the wedding is to simply be a legal transaction the answer is $25 the answer in our culture is a wedding should cost exactly as much as My Best Friend's Wedding but a little more right cuz that's a system and there isn't an absolute right answer to the question as you just pointed out instead it's what context are you in and so persuading someone that they should have a destination wedding with six attendees doesn't work if their belief in the system they're in is this is my chance to be princess for day it needs to be the big blowout I've always dreamed of and it's going to cost $120,000 and so that's a systems choice no one in the world would have a $120,000 wedding if before this the most

anyone ever spent was $1,000 that would never have happen we incrementally got there because of systems so when you think about your book it has a genre other books came before you it rhymes with some of those books so I'm not saying don't don't help people who need help I'm saying don't help people who aren't willing to believe what you need them to believe in order to help them does that go back to this concept of like defining the ideal Avatar before we create the work uh yes having a Persona in mind helps a lot and it also helps us get to the truth of this authenticity nonsense because it's very tempting to say I'm just being the authentic me the fact is no one wants you to be authentic they want you to be consistent they want you to be the best version of you that if you're having a terrible day and you disappoint the people in front of you you captured on YouTube doing something horrible that's not good because it was

authentic that was authentically you having a tantrum but that's not good professionals are consistent friends can be authentic and so what we seek to do is say I have this Avatar of the someone I'm trying to help I have this assertion of the change that I am trying to make and where they seek to go and now I will work consistently to make a promise and keep it for them that is the hard work of being a professional oh for people doing that and back to the idea of strategy when do you know know or not know this strategy's panning out and working or it's not and I need to shift and try something different right so this starts us down the road of the smallest viable audience that when Oprah first put her show on the number of people who watched it where is in the thousands not the millions that when your podcast started the first week you had a hundred listeners how do you get beyond that well we start with the smallest group of

people who if if we could satisfy them it would be enough and then if we deliver the magic we promised they will tell the others so if you're doing your work and the people you're doing it for aren't telling anyone else you need to do better work because the only way the word is going to spread is not by you getting the word out or hustling it's going to spread because the people you changed told someone else because it helped them to tell someone else but does that go back to this is an interesting point I'm super curious to hear what we have to say about it does that go back to us asking for what we want make sure to share the show with someone at that you know because you hear some podcast host for that example always promoting please share the show make sure you share the show with one person I oftentimes just forget that because I get caught up in whatever it is we're teaching or learning that day

from our guest so are you saying that's something that happens organically when you're helping the right people or it's something that we need to ask more people to do more things yeah I don't think asking is is as effective as insurance brokers think it is you know if you think about uh Susan Kane's Ted Talk which is one of the top 10 TED talks of all time she didn't finish by saying hey everyone who thinks they're shy please share this with everyone you know no how did it get to 20 30 40 million people the answer is people who are quiet people who are shy said if I share this someone will understand me I can send this to my boss or my cousin and I don't have to explain myself she explained myself for me that's why they shared it right when I made Purple Cow and put it in a milk carton there were only 5,000 of these in the world with the first batch people put it on their desk not CU they wanted to promote Seth

Goden but because if their boss asked them about it work would get better for them their projects would get better their status would go up so I offered them a tool that would help them get to where they want to go so A Book Like The Four Agreements um how has it sold millions and millions of copies it's because someone in relationship hands it to someone else in relationship and says if we can read this together Our Lives will get better so no you don't want to say or you don't have to say please give us a rating and share this that's not how it works it works because you make something that other people decide to share but you make it sound so easy right like the ex examples the Purple Cow The Four Agreements these are like unicorns out there that've done incredibly well how how do we create the strategy to formulate something that can go viral like that on its own I can't name something that's done

very well cuz someone hustled and hassled and kept promoting it over and over again right that the things that work ever since you know kind of Blue Miles Davis or all the way back to David Copperfield by Charles Dickens they work because they strike a cord with people in a way that caus them to change it share it the thing that's magic is the cost of you trying is so low right so I've written 9,000 blog posts in a row and not one of them has won the internet not one of my blog posts has gone insanely viral but every day I have a chance to write something that maybe some of my readers want to share and that's simple idea repeated daily got me from a 100 readers to a million readers without hassling anybody without being written up in the New York Times without being on 60 Minutes drip drip drip that is the way all ideas grow all movements grow Sigma Freud only had a couple patients his first week and now

right so that's what we seek to do is it a guarantee of course not but seeing it is better than just hoping to get lucky how long did it take you to go from a 100 blog readers to a million probably seven or eight years so it's a it's a commitment to consistency like you said but you weren't based on the feedback you were getting in the shares you felt you were on the right path that's right if you if you're showing up at uh a coffee house or a jazz club and at the end of your gig no one comes up and says where are you performing next I want to bring my friends your gig wasn't that good right if you you know when we think about Arlo Guthrie the Beloved Arlo Guthrie how did Arlo Guthrie become famous partly because his dad was super famous that got him invited to the Newport Folk Festival he performed for 15 people two hours later they dragged him to a slightly bigger room and he performed for 40 people and

then in the afternoon he performed for half and then by that night he performed for everyone at the New Port f Festival that's an accelerated version of what I'm talking about right because there were plenty of other people who performed that day at Newport who didn't that didn't happen to them so you're trying to catch lightning in a bottle when you're doing this work but at least you know there's a bottle and at least you know there's lightning your business gets to a certain size and the cracks start to emerge things you used to do in a day are taking a week you have too many manual processes you don't have one source of truth if this is you you should know these three numbers 37,251 37,000 that's the number of businesses which have upgraded to netsuite by Oracle net Suite is the number one Cloud Financial system streamlining accounting financial management inventory HR and more All For You 25 net site turns 25

this year that's 25 years of helping businesses do more with less close their books in days not weeks and drive down costs 25 years one because your business is one of a kind so you get a customized solution for all of your kpis key performance indicators in one efficient system with one source of Truth manage risk get reliable forecasts and improve your margins there is so much power in having all the information that you need in one place imagine how much more efficient you can be how much faster you can move and to do it was so much confidence it's unprecedented and the unprecedented offer that neted is providing you today is going to make this possible right now download Net's popular kpi checklist designed to give you consistently excellent performance absolutely free at netsuite.com Monahan that's nets.com Monahan to get your kpi checklist now netsuite.com monan that you talk about in the book is

the role of empathy and I'm wondering if you could get into a little bit of how empathy because it doesn't sound to me strategic sounds you know like strategy I I I would never partner empathy and strategy together so I'm interested in you explaining around that yes so empathy is a form of kindness but that's not what I'm talking about what I'm talking about is you have to acknowledge that other people have power other people have agency they can make choices so if you want to be in charge of the whole world and say I worked really hard on this everyone has to buy it you're going to be a frustrated person but if you acknowledge that that person has a choice to buy it or not I better make something they like that's empathy to surrender our control to let other people make a choice and again so much frustration from people who've been brainwashed by the Tik Tock influencer nonsense thing is they want to be in

charge instead of saying I bet there's somebody who if I elevated them would make the choice to come with me so having created as much as you have right you know 20 something books millions of blog posts you're constantly creating putting yourself out there which a lot of people are afraid to do and you know this and I'm sure you at some point has struggled with it at some point you had something that didn't do well right like one of the books didn't do as well as the other one of the blog post in how do you pick yourself back up to say I'm gonna go back at it again tomorrow well this is part of the game part of strategy which is I'm not putting myself out there I'm putting my ID out there I am putting the thing I crafted out there here I made this I didn't say it's me cuz people in the world don't know me I am playing the role of me when I am being a professional and half my blog posts have

done less than average right half my books have sold less than average that's the deal right when I got started in the book business I got 800 rejection letters in a row in the first year 800 times someone bought a stamp put on an envelope and mailed it to me they said no no no and it was very easy to take it personally until I realized they don't know me they just don't like this idea so what can I learn from this about the idea not about me and that's why authenticity is a trap and why it destroys people particularly aimed at women right is there's a a misogyny that goes with it it says tell us who your true self is and now we're going to hate you as opposed to put on a show make a move here it is you like it or you don't like it and if you don't like it I'm going to go do a different thing then why why is the world telling us to be authentic because I feel like I'm hearing that message if you want to

find success you've got to own your voice step into your power be your authentic self be different what does that mean well there's two reasons one the crowd always loves to see someone on stage bleeding and so there's a demand for that sort of Amy win housee meltdown and two it's the easiest thing to sell to creators because creators feel like they deserve to be seen if they're going to be judged for who they are and when I show up and talk about this lots of people roll their eyes at me and say no no no I want to be authentic I'm like yeah be authentic at home be authentic for your friends but if you're going to have a microphone please put on a show and do it consistently that's fair that's very very fair and I think that will Comfort a lot of women to hear that even though it's very um count it's the opposite of what I I'm hearing so often um you know popular especially on social media right

now when you talk about strategies and you're sharing these tactics and there's so many tactics here in the book around strategies how does that differ than the more traditional type of corporate strategies maybe most people are dealing with or have heard of okay so most corporations do planning not strategy they're managers they want to know if I do all the steps am I going to get a promotion if I do all the steps is this going to work every once in a while corporations understand strategy and use it in astonishingly powerful ways so I'll give you an example when women started going back to work uh not back to work when women started going to work outside the home uh combination of change in our culture and birth control the folks at Duncan hindes figured out that things like cake mix would be a good strategy because all of a sudden there was all this pressure on women to keep doing their full-time job of creating a

home and also do a full-time job of having a job and so keep making food convenient was a 60-year long strategy for General Foods General Mills Duncan Hind and the rest of them every time you made food more convenient sales went up that's a strategy right you're not always going to be right but the guy who launched Gogurt was right right that Gogurt is just yogurt in a more convenient form that's a strategy IBM had a strategy of you can't get fired for buying IBM meaning we sell expensive stuff that's not cutting edge that might not be the best thing but we have so many salespeople and such good support you're not going to get in trouble we're going to make everyone in your company happy all the time and Microsoft came along and they said our strategy is to be the IBM of software and every time they did that things got better so what we're looking for is a simple Arc of for the kind of people we're seeking

to serve this is the change we offer them and Oprah has done that beautifully my friend Christa tippet has done that beautifully Martha Stewart has done that brilliantly she's taken an interesting turn in the last couple years but the strategies right let's take homemaking which everybody used to do because they had to into something that some people weaponize as a hobby and Martha is going to teach you how to like do that how to paint things that are named after eggshells and you know alphabetize your crud and stuff because there was going to be someone who did that might as well be her so that's a strategy simple to describe hard to stick with so how often should people be trying to create a new strategy or evaluating if they even have a strategy in place I'm guessing you don't have a strategy in place and it needs to change when systems change and systems change when they are forced to they never want

to they change when communication changes or Computing or technology changes so AI is massively changing all of these systems right so the system of buying uh not particularly expensive illustration and art is going to be completely turned upside down because now you can buy it for free like if I'm going to buy if I let's say I'm a publisher of science fiction novels I used to pay $300 $400 for every cover and there were people who could make a living doing that now I can get it for free which means that whole system is going to be upended in the middle of that shift someone's going to come in with a new strategy because the system is going to want something new to deal with the massive shift that we're dealing work from home was this complete upending of an old system so someone like Zoom can show up and say ah we've got the answer for all of these companies that need the power that comes from having meetings

don't worry we got you covered it's the same goals but the system changed does that make sense it does but to your point with AI now that's essentially disrupting every industry so it's based on what you're saying that everybody needs to create a new strategy right now pretty much yeah I mean I'm not sure pizza place does but in general if you are used to working with ideas or images or data all of that is going to change so much you're going to have to figure out what to do so my friend Lisa worked with the Kodak company Kodak was everything Kodak completely owned the film business turns out Kodak invented digital photography Kodak had the patents on all the original digital cameras Kodak had everything they needed to Win It digital and they bought Lisa's company which was a digital photography company and she's sitting with the chairman of the board or the president or something in Rochester New York and she says what are

you doing it's obvious film is going away and you own all the stuff for digital why and why don't you just like shrink film over the next three or four years five years so that you can shift and he said Lisa how many processes do you think are involved in making a roller film and Lisa says I have no idea and he says 34 come over here and they're on like the sixth floor the biggest building on the Rochester Kodak campus and he points out the window he says how many buildings do you see and there are 34 buildings there's one building on the Kodak campus for every process to make a roll of film so they couldn't shrink it because all the buildings had to stay open and they were paralyzed because their strategy of a hundred years is make photography cheaper and more convenient and you will win and so film was everything and they went bankrupt because even though they saw the system was going to change they

didn't have the guts to do anything about it so how have you changed your strategy now that AI is come into your world um the biggest shift in my daily life after I worked on the carbon Almanac as a volunteer year for a year and a half is I stopped flying so my main source of income was flying places and giving speeches I did that a thousand times haven't been on a plane for work in three years and I'm in no hurry to start again and that shift coincided with covid coincided with conferences becoming virtual so now I show up around the world digitally right so yesterday I was in 90 countries and that would be really hard to do on an airplane so that's one shift another shift is that technology changed the social media landscape beginning with Twitter and then all the other social media networks Tik Tok and I looked at that and I said there's an opportunity here for someone who wants to make aggressive uh slightly

in-your-face really short form content and I said I am not going to do that because what I want to stand for doesn't match that I didn't want to become that so you can't go onto those media and insist that they make you popular the way you want to be popular you got to go on that media to do what the audience with empathy wants from you and so I knew that my blog readership was going to go down I knew that the amount of inbound I was going to get was going to go down and that was fine because my goal isn't to be popular or more well-known my goal is to make a difference and even if that that differences for 40 people that's fine so for people who aren't anywhere near as established and successful as you are what do you recommend they do do you recommend they ask Their audience what they want before they start building the strategy well Henry Ford may or may not have said if I had asked people what they wanted they would have

said Faster Horses and uh people have no idea no one wanted the iPhone no one wanted the Des desktop publishing no one knows what to want what we can do is watch them and watch how they spend their time and money to get what they dream of right so the bride who's spending all that money on her wedding doesn't actually want salmon and asparagus right she is buying salmon and asparagus to get peace of mind or status with her friends or connection so if that's what she wants and we can see this happening all over now we know what we could do we could build a shortcut to help people get that thing they say they want and that is when all sorts of magical opportunities open up because when we show up and say you know that thing you've always wanted you were right to always want it here it is and that we have to be responsible for what we offer so if someone wants a wasteful shortcut that's going to

bankrupt them I'm not sure you should be on the hook to give it to them but it may be that that's what they want so basically what I'm hearing you say is that most people don't have a strategy right the real opportunity is when systems change that's when it's time to activate deploy test try a new strategy and put something into place yes and given the conditions that we're in right now ultimately for everyone this is the time so when they sit down is it important for them to have many different voices around them from people from different Industries to advise like what is what are your ideas around collaboration and creating strategy that's the sound of another sale on Shopify and the moment another business dream becomes a reality your reality Shopify is the Commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide including mine whether you're selling your Mastermind your courses

whether you're selling your books Shopify simplify selling online and in person so you can focus on successfully growing your business and doing what you're great at creating whether it's fashion Home and Garden Health Beauty Shopify covers it all Shopify covers every sales channel from an in-person POS system to an all-in-one e-commerce platform it even lets you sell across social media marketplaces like Tik Tok Facebook and Instagram packed with industry leading tools ready to ignite your growth Shopify gives you complete control over your business and your your brand without having to learn any new skills in design or code and let me tell you I have no idea about design or code so thank you Shopify for making it so easy and thanks to 247 help and an extensive Business course Library Shopify is there to support your success every step of the way what's incredible to me about Shopify is how no matter how

big you want to grow no matter how big you currently are or how small you are Shopify is there to empower you with the confidence and control to revolutionize your business take your business to that next level constantly adding on new products services and ideas now it's your turn to get serious about selling and try Shopify now this is possibility powered by Shopify sign up for a $1 per month trial at shopify.com Monahan all lowercase m o n a an all lowercase sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com /m manahan all lowercase go to shopify.com Monahan to take your business to the next level today join me shopify.com Monahan you can thank me later I have almost never seen a committee come up with a good strategy and part of the reason is the people you're going to have surround yourself with care about you and they're going to encourage you not to do something that's going to fail and so

they're going to keep pushing you to do this conservative simple thing in the middle it's not going to work but they think it's safe and you won't blame them right and instead the best tactical advice I have for you is to write three completely different strategies in as much detail as you can knowing that you're going to have to randomly pick one of them so all three better be good and so now we're not going to justify to oursel and get ourselves into a corner believing that the one we picked is the best one I need three really great strategies right and and then you need to stress test them I am asserting that if I open a billiard's club on the outskirts of this town I can get this many people to come every night because blah blah blah blah blah and then and then you can test that with a friend and say ask me some hard questions like are there any other cities that have a billiard's club right

who what does this rhyme with who has done this before you in any way that has ever worked so I defend it defend it make it better defend it now you got three really good potential strategies and a friend of mine did this with a nonprofit he started he wrote business plans for three completely different nonprofits as opposed to constantly being on defense and justifying why his was the best one he said I got three and I think all of them are great so I'm just going to pick one at random and you're capable of this you're capable of saying okay I'm going to have a YouTube Interview show and it's going to be sponsored by ads I'm I'm going to be a coach for people in my town who do in-person meetings with me and I'm going to be a consultant to real estate firms that sell to the wealthy those are three completely different ways for you to spend your day now articulate how could this work who has come before who are

you going to serve how are you going to find clients and keep right it's only going to take you a weekend why wouldn't you spend a weekend to do this before you spend five years on the wrong project it makes such sense obviously when when you put it that way but you know what happens people get busy and once they start taking off with something it's hard to get people to pull back for a moment but to your point earlier if you don't know where you're going then you're just going and it sounds um not very strategic okay how do games relate to Everyday strategic decision making all right so games aren't just fun things like Scrabble games game theory is any situation where there are players and rules and outcomes so if you get pulled over by a cop for speeding it's a game what does the cop want what tools do you have to talk yourself out of the ticket if you can give the cop what they want by let's say

In This Moment a small smile and a feeling of respect maybe they'll just give you a warning and if you play some moves and you're wrong you'll get a ticket but you played a game and it came out one way or the other and it is a game to figure out what you're going to stand for say with a podcast in a world that has Infinity podcasts you make a move if it doesn't work you're not a bad person you just made the wrong move and we can learn a lot by watching the moves other people who play these games make right oh these six podcast switched from audio to video that was an interesting move what happens when someone makes that move am I too late to make that move what would be a version of that move that's not what they did like going to or you know Oculus and being on uh virtual stuff right maybe that's a move but at least we can talk about the move without saying this is authentically me it's a you know if I'm

the world chess champion and I move my knight in front of my pond that's not me that's the Knight moving and if the move doesn't work I just learned something don't you see because when you're describing that the first thing that popped in my mind is so many people that I see that I come across they want to build a strategy they want to play the game they want to view what other people are doing but then that's where they stop they'll correct they start obsessing about what everybody else is doing and and overanalyzing and never actually test or try anything so how do you get people to get beyond that point to say I'm actually GNA move forward and try one of it's super simple when in doubt look for the fear we are all afraid we're all afraid and that fear expresses itself in an enormous number of ways the class clown in third grade isn't the class clown cuz they're Jerry Seinfeld they're the class

clown because they're afraid of something and if we can find out where the fear is and help them understand how to protect that little tiny voice to then get to where they want to go sometimes it will get us there right in the Navy Seals they just create enough fear of something else that you're no longer afraid of diving into cold water and swimming because if you don't do that you're going to get in trouble blah blah blah blah blah blah and so we there a conservation of fear going on but we should name it right how often does someone say yeah I know I could do that but I'm afraid and that's the truth and I practice saying that all the time you still get afraid even with your own strategies your own business oh yeah there are all these things that I don't do and I'm honest with myself that I don't do them because I'm afraid well that's freeing to hear that you just made everybody feel a lot

better Seth because I think so often people have someone on a pedestal like International bestseller you know 20 something books people think oh this person finally figured it out but what do you I look back it over you know my career and I think as I get older I am more act to step into fear because I've done it more times I have more resilience at this point don't you think it's something that you get better at I am not afraid before I get on stage in front of 15,000 people I am not a afraid before I hop onto a legendary podcast like yours but there are so many other things that I'm afraid of that I'm not doing like yeah if you get good at something I hope that you're not filled with fear every time you do it but this is chopping wood and carrying water this is the practice in the craft but the frontier is you know the conversation that you're afraid to have with your dad before he passes away and so you're

hiding from it right that's fear and that fear is enervating and and cancerous and instead we can say I'm afraid of talking to my dad but I'm gonna do it anyway yeah that I mean that's real that's that's that's the real stuff not the I'm afraid of launching this marketing campaign to see what happens yeah but they're the same flavor because impact if you actually address it though yeah but the theory is if if I launch this marketing campaign and everybody hates it then uh I won't sell anything and then I'll lose my house and then I'll be thrown out and no one loves me and so I'll die alone outside that like the MailChimp button is one inch away from I'll die alone outside that's how close the two buttons are it's so good and that is so true that is so well said and I don't think people really think about it but you are absolutely right and that's why they get petrified and that's why they get

paralyzed and that's why they never press the button yeah how does this strategy build upon the previous works that you've created around leadership and marketing building off it redirecting it what does that actually look like you know I was just thinking about this yesterday um sometimes before I go to a meeting I will listen to one of my audiobooks because I want to hear what the old me had to say so the practice is about how we tell ourselves stories it's about getting over writers block and impostor syndrome this is marketing is how we tell other people stories and this is strategy is what story should we tell if we want to get to where we're going but it's still it's so interesting to hear strategy in the inclusion of Storytelling I would not again have put those two things together yeah but I mean if let's say I want to uh defeat you at chess I'm going to make some moves that are going to tell you a story

about what I'm going to do next and if the story I'm telling you about what I'm going to do next causes you to move in a way I'm hoping you will move I will win but if you can see through my story and know what I'm actually going to do next we'll probably tie or you'll win and so this story of Microsoft is the so is Microsoft is the IBM of software that's a story and it that story told to their employees will help them make better decisions which will shift how the market responds and so yeah humans are just story processing machines who's a company that you look to today that you feel like is a nailing strategy that we can look at as a as a positive example well every time I name a company then they do something that embarrasses me so I I try not to do that too often but um you know if we go back a little bit when Google launched Gmail you may recall that you couldn't get in unless you had an invitation from

someone who was already using it that was a brilliant strategy because everybody wanted in so badly well not only did people want in but the people who had an invitation their status went up so they were reminded that they were already doing something valuable so Google had this thing that was free so things that are free are often seen as worthless because they don't cost anything and by AR officially creating scarcity they created tension the tension of I'm going to be left behind the tension of how do I get one of these now people are talking about Gmail whereas before they wouldn't have been talking about it that's a strategy that when I was at Yahoo um I wasn't in the room for this meeting I'm glad to say they had the chance to buy Google for $10 million now for people who aren't keeping track Google's worth about a trillion dollars now that's a big difference and they said no no and the

reason they said no is Google I mean Yahoo strategy was the the web is a weird place people don't like it that much we want people to come to Yahoo and stay at Yahoo so we have Yahoo finance and Yahoo weather and Yahoo kids and Yahoo this and Yahoo that so we want one click to turn into 100 and Google showed up with a new strategy their strategy was the internet's growing up we only want people to stay here for one second that the entire model of Google is come here and go somewhere else and so it didn't match so Yahoo which was afraid of change said we'll just spend the $10 million on Yahoo kids instead and Google when they did their strategy almost no one wanted to follow them because it seemed absurd why would you build a search engine that makes people leave and it turned out to be brilliant and now when artificial intelligence shows up and chat GPT and perplexity and Claude each one of them has a different

strategy what story are they telling and who is listening to it because it's helping them get to where they want to go so we see it in Patagonia clothing we see it in whoever's selling waterproof eyeshadow or reef safe sunscreen right my friend makes reef safe sunscreen in the Philippines who's buying reef safe sunscreen probably tourists which kind of tourists tourists who look around the Philippines and think I don't want to wreck this place okay now we know the story and the product and where it can go but don't try to sell this in industrial siiz bins to people who don't care about the reef because they're not going to pay extra for it when you just describe the situation with Yahoo and Google which I wasn't familiar of all I was thinking of is yet again it's back to fear and looking at the opportunity cost that people are losing out on still just driven by fear back to your point that afraid of ending

up losing being alone and and having no one yeah and you know who feels this more than most are billionaires that's why they behave so poorly that's shocking to what would they they're afraid they're going to lose a billion dollars it's more than a billion dollars they they have measured they have protected themselves from the fear in their head by being one of the richest people in the world and so if they lost 90% of their money they'd still have more money than anyone could ever spend but they would have to live with the fact that the fence they built around themselves wasn't there anymore and so they have to keep doing things to stay on the top of the list things they're not proud of that there was a one of the first billionaires bought millions of acres in Brazil and proceeded to chop them down destroying Priceless parts of the ecosystem to make more money but he already had money why was he doing this

because the Forbes 400 game of I'm winning is the game the only game they know how to play play so I'm fortunate enough to call some people who have a billion dollars friends and when they stop doing that they get way happier but some of them can't stop they need to be in the public eye and they need to win this silly game as opposed to getting back to being alive because they're afraid they know do they know that's their strategy like is it are they cognizant of that I think they often are though they want to deny it because they're you know capitalism has as one of its myths people who create the most value get the most money this is absurd this is not true is one of the myths of capitalism and so they're saying well if I'm making a lot of money I must be creating a lot of value and it's so easy to measure that that's what they do they're lazy and they measure the thing that's easy to measure as opposed to

realizing we're all going to die they only got 30 years left what should I do tomorrow and the answer is probably not turn 4 billion into to5 billion that's probably not the best strategy at this point what strategies do you suggest for working within existing systems rather than against them okay so if you're working against the system what you need to say is hey you're wrong don't do that you're wrong and getting people to admit they're wrong is very hard so let's think about the healthare system healthare system doesn't make Health it makes treatments that's what they measure that's what people get rewarded for so if you want to change the Health Care System you could pick it outside of Kaiser Permanente and say they are wrong they should make Health instead that's probably not going to work but what you can do is get to what the people in the system do all day and what they want right so nurses want to have good shifts

and want to see patients get better and they want the people they work for to say you're doing a good job right so back when my dad was alive he had a hospital crib company and he invented uh a new kind of Hospital crib and instead of just launching it he went to the nurses at the DOR Becker Children's Hospital in Cleveland and he said here's a crib here's some clipboards make it better and they spent days giving him advice on how to make the crib better now nurses don't get to pick which cribs get bought the purchasing department does and if he was going to fight the system he could go to the purchasing department and yell at them and try to get them to buy a better crib but instead he named the crib after the hospital and the nurses when they started using this crib found how much better it made their day so they would tell other nurses this this you got to get this crib your day gets better so

then the nurses would go tell the purchasing agent we got to go buy this crib and it became the bestselling Crib in the country because he showed up to work with the system to get the system what it wanted which is not purchasing agents wanting a cheaper crib it was nurses feeling like they could be professionals it's it's like completely reverse engineering what everybody else is doing yeah exactly and finding success which is um which is so interesting and so smart but so obvious when you just laid it out that way it makes but then why are why aren't all businesses approaching things like this because it takes patience and you have to confront your fear it's much easier to just do what everybody else is doing which is the equivalent of TV ads late night TV yelling at people and so someone says yeah I'm going to go spend some money to get some Tik Tock uh traffic because if I can get a million Tik Tok uh views

then everything will be fine but if you talk to people a million Tik Tok views their life doesn't get that much better so true and so surprising I just had someone on um the show a couple weeks ago has millions of followers and said exactly that I have everyone thinks that it's just so easy Once you have millions of followers but it really it it is not right we're glamorizing something that really isn't isn't meaningful um the way that you wrote this book I feel like is is is very different very tactical what was your strategy and and the way that you wrote it well you know think for a minute Heather when you were growing up did your mom when you were four have a day when she announced today we're going to learn all the vegetables and she started with asparagus and worked her way to zucchini no of course not we get a little of this and then a couple days later we try that that's how we learn

anything so I couldn't write a book in alphabetical order that started with this and because every time I was talking about systems I need to talk about games and then I need to bring in a little bit of empathy so I just wrote it the way people learn which is let's talk about this story let's go through this example oh what about this thing over here back and forth and back and forth and then organized it so we could talk about it so I made this deck of cards that has uh 104 ideas in it that can be played in five million combinations because if you play four cards and you see the combinations you got to talk about them it'll jar something in your head cuz that's how the human brain works so that's how I wrote the book because I don't think people including me have the patience to read waren peace ever again nor the time definitely not the time and this is this is much more manageable who did you write it for who

needs to know that this is strategy I didn't write it for people who need to know it I wrote it for people who want to know it and cuz if you need to know it and you don't want to you're not going to engage with me I'm looking for people who are saying I'm I am aware that I'm not getting the results I need from the effort I'm putting into it and I am brave enough and smart enough to ask is there a better way and vulnerable enough because that it goes back to it goes fear again it really it really does so where can everyone get this strategy so at seth.

blog there's 9,000 blog posts are free and at seth. blog which stands for this is strategy I have videos and links and all sorts of nonsense and I will link all of that in the show notes below for you I mean this book is incredible it is so this is the most tactical book that um I have ever read I'm blown away and it definitely gets you thinking so differently in regards to the system that we're in and the process that we just keep repeating in the fears that are holding us back Seth thank you so much for writing this book and thank you for all the work that you keep creating thank you heather keep making a ro we need you we're going to keep trying until next week guys you keep making a Ruckus keep creating your confidence and check out Seth's book this a strategy link it in the show notes below I got it for you until then keep creating your confidence you know I will be

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "#472: Fear LESS, Plan MORE, Achieve BIG with Seth Godin, ​​Founder of the Carbon Almanac, Blogger..."?

Heather Monahan (Host), Seth Godin (Guest), NetSuite (Oracle) Ad Voice (Guest), Shopify Ad Voice (Guest).

What is "#472: Fear LESS, Plan MORE, Achieve BIG with Seth Godin, ​​Founder of the Carbon Almanac, Blogger..." about?

Seth Godin discusses the importance of strategic thinking in a rapidly changing environment, emphasizing that speed is irrelevant if one is not heading in the right direction. He reflects on his extensive experience and the insights from his latest book, which serves as a guide to developing a clear strategy for meaningful impact and success.

What is mentioned in this Heather Monahan episode?

48 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Empath, Google LLC, This Is Strategy, Purple Cow, The Practice, IBM. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "#472: Fear LESS, Plan MORE, Achieve BIG with Seth Godin, ​​Founder of the Carbon Almanac, Blogger..."?

The episode runs 55 min; the transcript is about 9,836 words in 56 timestamped sections.

More from Heather Monahan

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.