Marketing Guru Seth Godin Talks His New Book and Answers Our Questions
Seth is the best-selling author of the recently released “The Practice: Shipping Creative Work”, “This is Marketing”, “Purple Cow” and many more. Many Marketers, Marketing Directors, and CMO’s are familiar and own one if not more of Seth’s books, and often quote his works and live by his teachings. Although Seth’s major success had led him to become the big name he is in the Marketing world today, that wasn't always the case. “My career was in the toilet, I was a failure, the book I had published that came out after 9/11 was a total epic fail, and my publisher wanted nothing to do with me,” He recalls. “But, at the same time, I had something that I wanted to say. I had a book that I needed to dedicate to a friend of mine who I lost way too young and I also wanted to take my own advice,” he goes on to describe, his book the Purple Cow is about doing something remarkable and worth talking about.
He decided to take an excerpt from his book and put it into Fast Company Magazine and offered the 100k readers the opportunity to receive a free copy of the book if they sent $5 for shipping. He shipped out 5 thousand copies in a milk carton and that's where his success began.
We came up with a few questions for Seth, here are his insights:
How do you conquer writer's block?
Seth says he has his own set of literal writers “blocks” with 6 sides. On almost all of them, on one of the sides, he's written the expression “There’s no such thing as writer's block.” Seth says this is a reminder that writer’s block does not in fact exist. “We invented it because we don't in fact have typing or talking blocks, what we have is fear of not being perfect,” he explains, “we have fear of bad writing because we have these fears we announce we have a ‘block’.”
Seth says to the people with writer's block “show me your bad ideas” because if you show enough bad ideas, a good one will slip through. This distinction is important because if you just do the work and practice, you can get to the other side.
Do you have a certain amount of words or pages you look to put out every day? How do you set that bar?
“For me, there's a difference between a book and a blog post,” Seth explains, “I write a blog post every day, I’ve done 7000 in a row. I think everyone should have a blog and post every day.”
He says the act of announcing your thoughts, feelings, and actions to a group of people every day on a blog makes you better. Even if nobody is reading it, just the act of putting your predictions or observations out there every day helps.
To him, books are a different story. “I never say to myself, since 10 books ago, it's time for me to write a book,” he simplifies, “I only write a book when I have no choice.” Seth goes on to say that publishing a book is a pain in the butt so he only does it when he can't get away with a blog post. These books can take anywhere from 8 hours of work a day for a year to complete, or 3 weeks, he says there's a major in between depending on the book.
What are the best practices for hosting a zoom meeting these days?
Seth says right now people don't have zoom fatigue, they just have bad meeting fatigue. Most meetings can be bypassed with a simple memo, especially if you're just trying to convey information, and we should be focusing more on optimizing zoom for more creative and brainstorming sessions where people can be involved and intrigued.
What are the books that you read? What is the importance of reading up on marketing related novels?
Seth says it’s important to decide whether you're a professional or not. There are two deciding factors to determine this:
1. You show up to work even when you don't feel like it and 2. You’ve done the reading.
This could mean you went to school and studied what you need to know, but for marketing, an occupation filled with amateurs, reading is a major factor. “It's like getting the answer key before taking the SAT’s,” Seth argues, without reading the major marketing books you aren’t equipped for the marketing world in front of you.
Seth says his niche is modern marketing and helping people get out of their own way.
If you rewrote The Purple Cow today, with the new technology we have, do you think you'd make significant changes?
Seth's biggest change would be persuading people he wasn't crazy. When he wrote it, people said he was crazy because all that mattered at the time was network tv ads. He says he would probably never re-write it because he wouldn't be able to replicate how revolutionary it was in its time. His biggest advice he'd offer in the book now would be “I know your budget isn't what it used to be, that doesn't give you an excuse to hustle.” Rather than cutting corners, people should be thinking about what they could do that would be missed by the masses if it was taken away.
Where do you think “shower thoughts” or great ideas come from?
“Ideas come from ideas,” Seth argues, bad ideas lead to good ideas. The iterative practice of understanding genres, our customers' needs and wants, and having the empathy to be there for them and rhyme what came before is all leading up to what creates a good idea. Having the context of the industry, knowing what is best, and quieting the doubting voice in your head will lead to unique voices that have something to say.
How do you nurture this unique, creative inner voice?
Seth says the best advice he has for people is:
Realize that not all criticism is the same, we need to insulate ourselves from useless critics and people who are protecting you from heartache or failure, or the ones who have an ax to grind. Just ignore them! You already have people who are willing to give you positive feedback and raise the bar appropriately without going to ones who don't have your best interest in mind.
How would you summarize advertising vs. marketing?
They’re not even close to the same, Seth says. Advertising is a very specific craft that had its peak 20 years ago. It buys attention from a media company and makes enough money from the ads so you can buy it again. In 2020, Seth argues that you can't name one brand that became successful by advertising alone, whereas in 1965 they were all built with ads.
Now, brands become popular based on connections, trust, story, the change they make, and how they choose to show up in the world. Marketing is what you do, how you do it, and who you do it for. You can run ads as well, but it’s only a piece of the pie now.
Tell us a little information about your AltMBA.
For 5 years Seth has been running this 30-day intensive course with participants from all over the globe. “It’s 2-3 hours a day, every day for 30 days, 97% of the people in it finish it,” he explains, “it is not an MBA, it is about learning to see, tell better stories, decision making, and persuade others.” Seth and his team build it to work only online, and it’s worked great so far to change people for the better. Seth says if you'd like to check it out, head to altmba.com
Give us a summary of your newest book. What should we expect?
It’s a little different than the others, the subtitle is “Shipping Creative Work”. Seth says all 3 words in the title mean something, “Shipping” relates to how it doesn't count unless it interacts with the world. “Create” because if you're repeating something someone has already done, we don't need it, and “Work” because work is about changing other people and that's what we do for a living. “All of us are shipping creative work, there is a method and a practice to do so and it begins with trusting ourselves,” Seth explains. His book undo the brainwashing, showing us why we’re marketers in the first place, and also showing us how to engage in practice with intent. “That intent means choosing to lean into the world to change it for the better.”
You can order “The Practice: Shipping Creative Work” by Seth now!
Written by Juliana Bermudez