Seth Godin Dissects His Signature Story - How Stories Happen #16
In this episode, it's a total treat as the one and only Seth Godin takes us into how he thinks about storytelling and the intersection of strategy and story, and then we hear him dissect a signature tale. Plus, Seth and I trade stories in the back half of the episode—business storytelling nerdery on full display.
If you’ve heard Seth before, expect a refreshing new angle into his thinking and a closer look at a craft he has mastered and holds dear.
His brand new book, This is Strategy, is available now. Go to seths.blog/tis
If you're unfamiliar with his work, Seth is a world-renowned storyteller and thought leader, a legendary keynote speaker who helped disrupt the format (which we talk about), and the bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Purple Cow, The Practice, and This Is Marketing.
The signature story Seth shares is about Charles Mochet and the recumbent bike. This is something I call a "super-story," as Seth can and has used it many times over the years, always with a different shape and different insight he extracts from it. We talk about that, as well as how he opens the story to great effect, the beats that grip you, the moments he loves in it, and how it helps him speak to the concepts of his new book, like status and affiliation.
As Seth says, if you're a storyteller, then you're a teacher, and a good rule of teaching is, "Don't steal the revelation." We discuss that line and its consequences too.
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Episode Resources:
Learn more about Seth at seths.blog and get a copy of his new book, This Is Strategy, at seths.blog/tis
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Produced by Ilana Nevins
Cover art designed by Blake Ink
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ABOUT JAY:
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Jay Acunzo is an author, speaker, and differentiation-and-thought leadership consultant on a mission to help you make what matters to your career, company, and community. He's an advisor to experts, execs, and entrepreneurs who want to resonate deeper with others, not just reach them. To do so, he helps you turn your expertise into IP and your IP into differentiated messaging, exceptional speeches, and celebrated creative projects, equipping you with the communication techniques and power of today’s top thought leaders—because he believes in standing out through substance and stories, not hollow hype.
A leading voice in B2B content marketing for many years thanks to his roles at brands like Google and HubSpot, companies like Mailchimp, Salesforce, Wistia, and GoDaddy have turned to Jay to strengthen their storytelling, while dozens of individual authors, speakers, consultants, and service providers hire Jay as their dedicated thought partner and exec. producer to help develop their premise, IP, speaking, and shows.
Jay lives in the Boston area with his family as a proud Yankees and Knicks fan. In the 60 seconds per week he's not creating stuff for work or making his kids laugh, he likes to shoot hoops, sip nice bourbons, cook with his wife, and daydream about telling stories like that of his storytelling hero, Anthony Bourdain.
Full Transcript:
(This was created using Ai and may contain some errors.)
Jay Acunzo: [00:00:00] This is How Stories Happen. Every episode, an expert entrepreneur or business storyteller dissects one signature story piece by piece. We hear how they found it and developed it, how it might improve, and how they're using it to grow their business and share their message. How do stories happen intentionally?
A storyteller doesn't need to experience anything extraordinary because they know how to find meaning in the ordinary. It's an active craft, and on this show, we're putting the crafting on display. I'm your host, Jay Acunzo.
Seth Godin: Professionals aren't authentic. Professional surgeons aren't authentic. Elvis Costello isn't authentic. You don't want authentic. You want consistent 800 times. Someone in book publishing thought enough to buy a stamp, put on an envelope, write me a letter, and write in a letter. We think this is a bad idea, and he says, I want to hire you to break the world record for longest distance pedaled in one hour. And the bike racer sneers at him and says something in French and walks away The coda gra is the genital surgery. No one sees the genital surgery coming. I love that pushback. Once we have a roof over our head enough to eat and health, all there is is story. What a great place to start.
Jay Acunzo: Being a commodity is a choice. I'll say it again. Being a commodity. Is a choice. Those are the words of today's guest, Seth Godin, and I'd argue they're a major reason why I wanted to make this show. So people with substance and expertise and a desire to serve others, people with something meaningful to say and to share can escape from the commodity cage on the endlessly spinning hamster wheel, and instead.
Make things that matter. Things that are more insightful and more personal. And part of doing that is to assume the posture of a storyteller. Yes, there is a process, and of course we need the practice. But the difference between learning story in some abstract sense and actually being a storyteller is your posture.
It's not just the steps that you follow, the tools that you use, the place you do the work, or what medium you love making in. It's how you see yourself and the world. Seth, of course, has the posture of a storyteller, but he's also changed the posture of so many others, and I put myself. Squarely in that camp as well.
Seth is the author of more than 20 bestselling books, including Purple Cow, The Practice. This is Marketing The Dip and Linchpin, and his brand new book is already a number one bestseller in the category because Seth, it's called, this Is Strategy. It's a book about how to make better plans, plans for yourself, plans for others.
Plans to change the culture. How was that? That was my best Seth Run of three impression, my best Seth impression on the show. Also, my last, anyway, this is my first time talking to Seth Ho, hopefully not my last. And what an insane treat to hear a storyteller like him dissect a single story and really go deep into the craft, celebrating and exploring it from all angles. The process, absolutely. The practice, it's paramount, but of course you have to have the posture.
One of the things that has been a total treat about doing this show is to get really geeky with people who are often asked for general advice, uh, about something very specific and near and dear to our hearts. And when you start rooting around. In like the minutia of people's work, you find these little quirks and threads that are not stolen from heroes, but they're little homages and near and dear to your heart is a storytelling hero of yours, uh, Zig Ziglar. And I'm curious if I spent enough time with your work and your style and your projects, where would I find the spirit of Zig showing up in there?
Seth Godin: What a great place to start. Zig is in all of my work, there's probably a dozen people I could say that about. He and I disagreed about stuff, but we agreed about things as well.
I published one of his books. I was on stage with him. Once Zig and Tom Peters invented the idea that you could stand on stage and get paid for it. Those were the two OGs, right? Mm-Hmm. I guess the two biggest takeaways, number one, you're playing a role in real life. Zig Ziglar was not like Zig Ziglar. He was just as moral, just as upstanding, but he, he was like the Macy's Day parade after they let half the air out of the balloon, and that's totally cool.
He was honest about that. And the second thing is we tell stories on purpose. There's this weird hangup we have with authenticity that was pushed on us by, uh, I don't know, people on the internet who wanted more divas and more trauma professionals aren't authentic.
Professional surgeons aren't authentic. Elvis Costello isn't authentic. You don't want authentic. You want consistent. And so. I know when I am seeking to tell a story in a book. Hmm. My job is not to chronicle the truth as it is occurring. There are plenty of people who can do that. My job is to tell a story that's true enough, that holds up to scrutiny, that sits with people, that resonates with people.
And what if I'm reading something. That I wrote, and it reminds me of Tom or Zig or Roz Zander, uh, or Steve Pressfield. I can say to myself, okay, that was a good one.
Jay Acunzo: One of my storytelling heroes is Anthony Bourdain, and for many reasons and people who've listened to the show before are like enough with the Bourdain thing.
But I will say one detail I haven't talked much about is when I've really first discovered his work. I was really disillusioned with the way I saw the internet. Showing up. I got into this to be a storyteller, and then you get the hacks and the cheats and the hucksters and all these things that seemingly get rewarded.
I'd question that, but you get drawn toward it or you are immersed in it, and at the lowest point of being disillusioned with all this content stuff here, I found the storyteller who is waiting into the gray and making you think and feel and questioning the status quo, but doing so with grace and all these things.
So I was kind of going through a moment and discovered my storytelling hero. When you first discovered the work of Zig, what were you going through in your life? Was there any stinking thinking that got you there?
Seth Godin: So, um, I started my book Packaging Business when I was 26. I sold my first book the first day for $5,000 Chip Conley, and I split the money and then I got 800 rejection letters in a row. 800 times someone in book publishing thought enough to buy a stamp, put on an envelope, write me a letter, and write in the letter.
We think this is a bad idea. That went on for over a year. So yeah, there was plenty of stinking thinking. There was plenty of, here we go again. Yeah. And I had a semi broken down. Miata was the only cassette player in my life, and I would go out, I worked at home. I would go out and get in the car because then I wouldn't even drive anywhere and I would listen to an hour a zig.
I memorized 72 hours of Zig, and I gotta say, if you want to be a professional speaker, it helps to find someone that you can memorize 72 hours of their content. Sure. The same way, if you asked Dave Brubeck to play some jazz from 20 years ago from one of his heroes, he can play it like they did. Don't copy these people, but embody what someone who put in the hours before you figured out how to do.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah, and I mentioned these little threads, these little quirks, they come through on the show in the minutia that I feel like the magic is in the minutiae. It's why I like podcasts like song exploder or good one, or I, I can just watch craftspeople discuss the craft for hours.
And if you love it and you can describe it to me, I'm in, I'll, I'll hear you. But I think that's not how people want stories to happen in their lives. They want them to be these giants that wats the earth and club them over the head. And you're like, I got a story to tell. And I find that they're more like little fairies that float around and zip away the moment you enter, you know, their area.
And so you have to become a noticer. And I've heard you talk about the power of having your daily blogging practice helps you walk the earth noticing things and find those little things that, oh, that's a threat. Or that could be a. Thing or that makes me feel or question something and, uh, let me save that thread and pull it later.
Is there that special kind of moment or story where, where you find it, you're like, oh, I got a good one today?
Seth Godin: So I don't wanna veer too far away from the brilliant insight you're sharing, but we need to talk about pedagogy. Hmm. Pedagogy is the science of teaching. The idea of learning about learning. If you are trying to make a difference as a storyteller, whether it's as a speaker or a marketer, you're actually a teacher.
And the reason that people in tech support are so annoying in general, not all of them, is 'cause they already know how to solve the problem you're calling about. And if you're spending all day answering calls about problems that you've answered for other people all day. You can get frustrated very fast.
And so they lose empathy and they're like, how can you not know this? Or another thing you might notice when you're driving down the highway road signs are not put up for people who are lost. They're put up for people who know where they [00:10:00] are. There's no empathy for the person who is lost because there's so many different ways to be lost that they would never be able to make the signs work.
Right? So if we're gonna tell a story. We have to go to where someone is. So for me, the noticing is the fuel for my blog. Every blog post is about someone, even though I never tell you who that person is, 'cause I noticed something that was working that I didn't understand, something that wasn't working, that I wish I could help someone fix.
But it really works because I'm a canoeing instructor and I know how to help a 12-year-old who is afraid. Get in a 17 foot long canoe by themselves on a lake and paddle it in a straight line. And I do it differently each time, but I, I already know how to do it. My job is to leave breadcrumbs so that they can translate words or motion into kinesiology, and then belief and then action.
Could I summarize the book Purple Cow in one page? Of course I could. But all the stories in Purple Cow are scaffolding to help somebody see what I see, so that then they will choose to do what they can choose to do.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah, and I notice the stories you prefer to spin. Either you're on a mic or you're writing or on a stage. There's no should here. I don't want people listening to think, oh, that we should do it this way, not this way. But there's a common thread I've seen in many speakers, authors, writers, teachers, consultants, when they use a story. It's sort of a narrative illustration.
Like, let me show you what this looks like, and here's Bill. And Bill went through this experience. Yours are really short, they're really economical, as is most of your writing, but even the example of being a canoe instructor is an example of that versus the long narrative. I don't know who you wanna cite, but name a business author here where it's like you open with that dramatic moment.
You tell the story and then you reveal what the book's about after the story. Right? It can tip a little cliche, but there are, I think there is a use to the illustrative story. What do these little economical stories that you like to tell? Do well or, or even just differently than the longer form, like more immersive narratives that I see from many business communicators.
Seth Godin: So one of the rules I think of teaching is don't steal the revelation. Hmm. What that means is you can say, dun duh duh duh nuh. You don't say, you don't say duh duh. You let the other person say duh duh. Because if you finished the line, it's yours. If I finish it, you just write it down in your notebook, right?
So what I'm trying to do is through consistent persistence, show up and let people be able to say, well, I knew that all along. 'cause then they know it and if I don't get credit for it, that's fine.
Jay Acunzo: I've heard you say that every learning is autodidactic, right? It feels like that's what you're, you're saying here where the story is the theater of the mind.
If I spell it all out for you, I'd mentioned Bourdain before. He didn't say, and let me sum up this episode with five key takeaways, or go to my website and here's the blueprint for operating the same way or anything like that. It was, I'm gonna lead you there. And give you the space, or give you the beat, or give you the musicality or give you something that allows you to participate.
Like the Theater of the Mind thing. It makes me think it's not even that you're enrolled as an actor, you're like enrolled as the director. Mm-Hmm. Like if you're adding to it, you're directing it and controlling it in your mind. That's a powerful thing that we, and you can tell by my personality. Love to talk, love, energy, love.
We, we overstuff things too full of like and, and, and I can't leave silence. And here's exactly what you should take away from it, which means I'm shoving you, the director outta the picture and making it my own.
Seth Godin: There were a hundred speeches that I gave before I had confidence, and in those a hundred speeches, there are so much pressure and it's so tempting to fill in every gap.
Even to this day when I put up a picture of the Solvang Conference from 1927 and I say, there's Madam Curry and there's Albert Einstein. Neils Boer was there. It said that Heisenberg was there, but it's uncertain if I wait for the crowd to catch up on that. There's this moment. When I just wanna say, didn't you hear what I just said? Heisenberg was, it's uncertain. That's funny. But you can't do that. You gotta have the confidence to just say they'll get it tomorrow. It's fine.
Jay Acunzo: Before we hear the story that you're gonna share with us, that we can discuss in depth a little bit. I wanna talk quickly about the book. This is strategy. You've said that all your books are things that you only write if you absolutely have to, given all the books you've written and all the ways the world changed.
You're only gonna write another book if you absolutely have to. So I'm curious, why did you absolutely have to write This is strategy.
Seth Godin: So a blog post reaches 10 to 20 times as many people as a book. And a blog post takes me 10 minutes to an hour, and a book takes me a year 'cause I gotta bring it to people.
But books demand to be discussed. The number of people who are talking about Purple Cow today is way greater than the number of people who are talking about a blog post I wrote that year. I wrote this book for people to talk about it. Many of the people who are listening to this, Jay are soloists and we're lonely.
And we're making stuff up as we go and we're not sure. I would like to be able to have people in our industry talk to each other and say, well, my strategy is if I do this, this, and this, I'll get a TED Talk. You know, I'm thinking about this book thing, but I'm not sure how that's gonna fit in with this other thing.
Just talk about it. And it makes it way more likely. You're gonna talk about it if you've got the deck I made, or the book I made. 'cause you can say, oh 1 47, this is, we're gonna talk about 1 47. Let's go.
Jay Acunzo: In the book, you list reasons that we avoid having a strategy. Mm-Hmm. Things like we're not able to see the system.
We'd prefer to get the benefits of our actions sooner rather than later. We've been indoctrinated to follow instructions and ask for tactics. I. Call that the tyranny of the right answer. You have to have the right answer before you speak up. Don't stick your neck out. Don't raise your hand too high that something you've performed on stage before is raising your hand even higher is possible.
Right. There's one that I wi I wanted a little deeper insight into as we look at the reasons we avoid having a strategy, which is you said we see the system, but we can't choose between working with it or on it. What did you mean by that?
Seth Godin: So to work with the system is to willingly sign up to be a cog. So, for example, back in the days when I flew, if I was gonna go from here to Florida, I need to work completely in the system.
My TSA pre has gotta be current and up to date, my ticket has to have enough resilience in it that if the airline screws up, I can walk to another terminal. My carry-on bag has to, I'm not trying to change the airlines in any way. Right. That's working with the system. A lot of people who wanna make a living doing speaking.
Think that they should work with the system. And I would say to those people, I see, I see you're doing the NSA stuff and I see you're doing the grooming stuff and I see you've got this self-published book that's just like that person's self-published book. Your slogan as you've, you can pick anyone. I'm anyone.
Here I am. And the problem with working in the system, if you're trying to break in that way, is someone's gonna win the lottery and it's not gonna be you. Mm-Hmm. The alternative is to work on the system to say, well, this is a system that was optimized for a certain kind of privileged white man who has a certain kind of background and already succeeded at something else.
This system was optimized for Henry Kissinger. Henry Kissinger was making a hundred thousand dollars flying in private plane file about bad speech done right? So I'm gonna come up with a new system and my system is going to involve. Making a TEDx talk every two months and not waiting for someone to hire me to give talks, but to organize my own talks or to do what Tony Robbins did at the beginning of his career with the Holiday Inn and the 50 yards of charcoal burning outside.
There's all these ways people showed up and changed the system and I was one of them, right? The way I did slides and stuff. All this pushback. No, you're not allowed to do it that way. Well, that's precisely why I'm gonna do it. And so you gotta pick, and what you don't wanna do is most of each, 'cause that's not gonna work either.
Jay Acunzo: A pretty large percent of the people I interact with, both through the show and through my work elsewhere are. Not the professional paid keynote speakers yet, or maybe they don't want it. They are using storytelling on a stage or away from the stage to spark a change. Right? Right. And so they mo mostly earn a living through consulting, selling strategy.
So this book is perfect for them. They work with clients when you're that type of person. There's like maybe an optical sense that, well, I have less control to do it my way or to change and work on the system or invent a better one because I'm not on the main stage. I'm not, I'm a consultant. I'm behind the scenes.
I'm being enrolled into and invited into my client's world and systems, et cetera. What could I possibly do to do anything but just deliver on spec?
Seth Godin: I love that pushback. So if you work at McKinsey and you're making $400,000 a year, McKinsey's billing you out at $3 million a year. If you leave McKinsey and you're still the same consultant, your billables go from 3 million to 300,000, where'd the money go? Cause it's not about the quality of the consulting. When someone buys McKinsey Consulting, they're buying a story to tell the board. So if you wanna be a strategy [00:20:00] consultant, like a lot of other strategy consultants and hope to get your fair share of strategy consulting, you're doing it exactly the right way.
But if you wanna change this system. You could do things like, say, I only work with orthodontists. Or you could say, I fired two thirds of my clients. We have an engagement that lasts for three months, but if you're not doing what I say, within 10 days, you're fired. There's this huge range of ways you could stand for something, and that's the alternative to working in the system and having a job without a boss.
And I think there's nothing wrong with having a job without a boss if. You're happy, but if you're not realize you have way more agency and freedom than you thought.
Jay Acunzo: Let's talk about a story that is near and dear to your heart about the way systems unfold sometimes through hidden things that we don't even take into account anymore in our current life and culture, uh, which is the story of the recumbent bicycle.
I'm really eager to hear how you'll present this. The quick backdrop for people is in doing research for this episode, found that you'd mentioned this four distinct different times on your blog. Over time, never once positioning or packaging or discussing it the same way. Um, I have much more I wanna say afterwards, but I didn't wanna give any details away.
So that, that, that was a fascinating detail to me. And the first instance was in 2009. And I also understand you used to ride a recumbent bicycle? I still do, yeah. Oh, you still do? Oh great. Oh, awesome. And so each time I read these different iterations. Slightly different execution of the story, very different insight that you arrive to, right?
It's just one of those super stories seemingly that can go with you as you move through different premises and projects and era of your life. When you're ready, the floor is yours to share with us the story of the recumbent bicycle.
Seth Godin: Okay, so the following is true. Recumbent bikes are safer and faster than regular bikes.
A recumbent bike. You may have seen one in the gym, but these are actual bicycles you can ride outside. Our ones where your feet are sort of up in the air in front of you when you are leaning backwards, they have lower wind resistance, they're better for your body in a whole bunch of ways, and they're faster.
The world record for the Race Across America was set by, uh, Maria who owns a recumbent bike company and just trust me, it's fast. Okay, so with that said. Charles Moshe invents the recumbent bike 105 or so years ago. He lives in Paris. Paris then, and now hotbed of bike racing and a lot of status and prestige.
Goes to a world class bike racer. Moshe invents this bike and he goes to one of these bike racers and he says, I want to hire you to break the world record for longest distance pedaled in one hour. I. And the bike racer sneers at him and says something in French and walks away, and he's unable to hire the bike racer that he wants, but he finds one of these guys has a brother who's a pretty good bicyclist, hard up for cash, pays him some francs.
He breaks the record. He doesn't break the record by a little. He breaks the record by a lot. Then what happens? The bike racers feel very threatened by this. They are very good at riding the other kind of bike, and if this bike takes off, their status is gonna go down. Number two, the other bike manufacturers are threatened by this 'cause they know how to make the other kind of bike, and if this takes off, their sales are gonna go down.
So the bike racers and the bike manufacturers get together and they ban recumbent bikes from world bike racing. This band has stood to this day. And one of the repercussions of this is that even if you're not gonna enter a professional bike race, you are certainly riding a bike that looks like you could.
Why do you do that? Two reasons. One, that's what the manufacturers are good at making. And two, you wanna look like you could be a bike racer. That's part of the ethos and status that comes with biking. The problem is so big. Bicycling magazine reported last year that women around the world are getting genital surgery on their labia because the bikes are hurting them so badly.
Something they wouldn't need to do if they just pedaled a recumbent bike. Okay, so that's the background. What should Charles Moshe have done? What he should have done is persevere to get a high status bike rider to break the record. Because then status would've been conferred to the people who the system wanted to have status.
So what a strategy is, is it acknowledges the people we seek to serve what they want. And what people want is status, affiliation, and the freedom from fear and big problems demand small solutions. It's a hundred years later, recumbent bikes are way better. They're selling better than ever. But if Charles Moshe wanted to plant the seeds for a real change in bicycling, he needed to plant them in ground that would grow the seeds he had to plant.
Jay Acunzo: Thank you for that. I was sort of, oh my gosh. You could take a left turn here. You could take a right turn. There's so much you could do with that story. Are there any nerdy little details about it that, oh, I just, I love that this is part of the story.
Seth Godin: Well, the purpose of the story is people get hung up when I talk about status.
They think status is only money, luxury goods, first class travel. Status is also the first scene of The Godfather when the Undertaker asks The Godfather for a favor. Status is also the third grader who has a yo-yo and none of the other kids have a yo-yo status is the bike racing hierarchy. So that's why the story is in the book. The crudite is the genital surgery. No one sees the genital surgery coming.
Jay Acunzo: That's it. I was just like my eyes just wide when you said that. I also love the framing just to give a little, uh, credit where credit is due of like the following is true in an era of sensationalism. 99% do it wrong. Here are my simple secrets.
What a simple way to open that story in a way that grips you. Without being overly sensational, uh, the following is true. Such a wonderful little deft line there. I love that. And then the cadence of it. You know, like, he went to this person, Nope, he wouldn't do it, but he had a brother. Like, there's just some sort of musicality and generous use of tension that I saw.
And without, again, without puffing it up and making it overly sensationalized, it did make me think about why newspapers are so big. I don't know if this is a story you've encountered in your travels, but why we use broadsheet. Newspapers. I'll share it for the folks listening who may not know the story.
In 1712, the newspaper industry was basically in the uk. Suffering from attacks by the government. And it was based not on the number of words they published, but the number of pages, right? And so they found a loophole very clever in the 17 hundreds. Well, if we expand the size of the pages, we can keep the same number of words and avoid the tax.
And then a century later in the 18 hundreds, the tax was repealed. If you fast forward to the two thousands, early two thousands. The Independent decided that they were gonna shrink to what they call tabloid sheets, kind of a magaziney type size, right? And they were ridiculed by their peers. But I think it is far more ridiculous to clinging to a convention born centuries ago based on attacks that no longer exists than what the Independent did.
And then the Harvard Business Review comes out and writes about the fact that not only did they save money. On the printing, they sold more print editions. So I just love that as an example of there's this little ripple effect cascading.
Seth Godin: That's, I'm stealing that one.
Jay Acunzo: Please do.
Seth Godin: I'm stealing that one. Also worth noting that even after the evidence is in, the newspapers aren't changing because systems defend themselves by creating culture and changing the culture is hard. My newspaper story to pay you one back is what's the most famous painting in the world? The Mona Lisa. Of course, everyone says that.
Why is it the most famous painting in the world? Because there's a crowd. Well, that's because it's the most famous, no idea. I couldn't tell you. Maybe 'cause her eyes follow you everywhere you go. It's the most famous painting in the world. 'cause about a hundred years ago, someone stole it. Mm. It was stolen right wing newspapers.
Were gaining their most important traction, and they also were printed in color in those days. And so the Mona Lisa was on the front page of newspapers around the world for a long time. They even arrested Pablo Picasso as a suspect, and they finally found it a year later. But by that point, 'cause the culture of media was such that we needed there to be an icon for a famous painting, there hadn't been one. But the newspapers assured us this was a famous painting and so it has stuck ever since.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah, there's just something about all three of these stories, the, the, the recumbent bicycle broad sheets, Mona Lisa, where like, I don't know what, how to describe it other than electricity of the brain. Like there's something that lights you up. It's brilliant.
Seth Godin: I love that. Thank you.
Jay Acunzo: Uh, would it be okay to revisit the four times you used the recumbent bike?
Seth Godin: Oh, sure. So. I pride myself on having unusual hobbies and I like finding things that I can assert are better. I like look for the best chocolate bar or whatever It's, and I also love stories of spunky entrepreneurs who persist against systems in a generous way and then find traction.
So I got how to get a recumbent bike because I hurt my shoulders when I was a teenager and my neck has never been right. And the early recumbent bikes that I had were very long, heavy, difficult to deal with affairs. [00:30:00] And so every year or two I'd find a better one. But then I discovered this one particular company that makes recumbent bikes and they have the chain as really short instead of having the chain go to the rear wheels chain goes to the front wheels, it's front wheel drive. But alert listeners understand that a front wheel drive bike is very difficult to imagine because you also have to steer it. So you're steering with your feet, you're holding the handlebars, but your feet are also steering. Wow. And just the whole package of it that it’s biking, but it's also a super intellectual exercise that took hours to learn. I love that. So I'll get back from a bike ride. I'll feel indebted to Maria and her team's persistent effort, and I'll think, oh, I probably have a story about this. And so it'll show up. But I haven't been on the bike in a, in a few weeks, but now after this call, I'm gonna go for a ride.
Jay Acunzo: I love that. I love that. And, and I was admiring just, you know, the first instance you wrote about it. This is arriving at an insight about the importance of the uphill and learning to embrace that versus the downhill. You talked, oh yeah. I almost died.
Seth Godin: That, that post was about the day I almost died.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah, yeah.
Seth Godin: Don't go, don't speed up on the downhill.
Jay Acunzo: That’s 2011. You wrote about the reason we wave at somebody who has an unusual thing, right? If you see someone else with a recumbent bite, you wave. I'm reminded of the great mark, Sharon Brock and his, his idea of nice bike to Harley Davidson's riders going, Hey, nice bike.
You're waving at yourself is the quote that you wrote in that blog post you're waving at yourself 2017. This feels like the most sort of like the value payload of the story or kind of like the down the fairway, perfect execution to arrive at like this inside of. This was, you know, the broadsheet story all over again.
This happened a long time ago, cascading through time. Now we have a convention and we don't even know why. And then 2023 related, but different to that last one. It was about like little decisions and systems. And I could see a straight line to, to this is strategy as a book and as a premise. Um, so I just loved seeing the evolution of a story and the, and the multi-use of, of any one story that's good to have in your back pocket.
Seth Godin: I really appreciate the insight. Thank you.
Jay Acunzo: Sure. Yeah. I'm nothing if not a nerd. What I basically just did was trace a little bit of your practice, right? And you've talked about the practice, you've written, the book, the practice. One of the things that concerns me is a lot of people's practices now are happening on a stage.
I don't mean a physical stage. I mean on social media, for example, you're pulling up a light box on LinkedIn to write a short essay on LinkedIn and all around behind you, very visible. Moments of engagement or even just being on that channel, you're recognizing your brain does something and goes, I should couch or change or massage this to work.
And that's really concerning to me because at what point do you then say, this is me going deeper into what I have to say? What makes a practice like yours so useful? 'cause it's not you writing on LinkedIn every day.
Seth Godin: No, it's not. Day trading is a problem. Day trading, you'll never meet somebody who made consistent income day trading because you're always looking in the rear view mirror and you don't have a philosophy.
And what happens to people who think that succeeding on LinkedIn is success is they become unpaid employees of LinkedIn, that they're working for the algorithm, and LinkedIn does not care about you at all. If you were working for the algorithm, so is everybody else, and I, I can't remember the last book I saw of, these are the best posts I've ever posted on LinkedIn, all in a collection.
No one wants that because it's ephemeral. You're hitting it against the backboard and you're measuring it in minutes, not hours or weeks or years. So I used to have comments on my blog 'cause everyone said I had to have comments on my blog. And what I discovered is that I was adding parentheticals and exceptions to my posts so that someone wouldn't be able to write in the comments, “I gotcha.” I was writing my blogs, they were getting worse and worse in anticipation of criticism, and I realized I either had to have a blog with no comments or no blog, but there was no, no other alternative. So I turned off the comments and people yelled at me for like a year, and I'm like, start your own blog and make as many comments about my blog as you want.
This system works that way, but this is my blog and I'm writing for people I don't see, and I'm writing for the future. I wanna be proud of this post 10 years from now. Right? That doesn't mean you shouldn't be on LinkedIn. It means you should be very clear when you are gonna spend time and money. What asset are you acquiring? And the asset of, I got four comments on LinkedIn is not a particularly useful asset.
Jay Acunzo: Yeah. There's something about this era driving a wedge and separating these two concepts ever further apart between visibility and memorability, where followers are influence, like we're, we're sort of, we're playing this game.
We didn't really get into the business of trying to play in the first place with these metrics or reward systems or outcomes that. Is that it? Is that what we're trying to do here? Like I know you talk a lot about change and I do feel like people rationalize today the fact that, well, what else can you do? Right? What else can you do but play into, or that's what works, right? Or I've even heard people say, yeah, it's click Beatty, but you know, I haven't heard anybody complain and I'm like, boy, should you learn about a concept called non-response bias? Just 'cause you haven't heard people say anything negative doesn't mean you're not leaving a wake of damage in your trail.
This to me culminates with a quote from someone I know that, that you hold on High esteem, which is the great Tina Roth Eisenberg of Creative Mornings and other awesome internet projects. She posted something that really struck a nerve lately, and I'm curious to hear your reaction to this where she was like, I missed the innocence of the early blogging days.
Yeah, no. Trying to monetize your audience. No algorithms, no funnel talk. It was fun and playful. People were genuinely excited to share their weird obsessions and interests. I will forever try to recreate. That corner of the internet. I feel like much of the people who listen to the show and very many people who, who appreciate your work, Seth, they are trying to do something out in the world, build a business, spark a change.
But there's something about what Tina said that they're like, I want that to like, is that a bygone era? Are we just telling ourselves a bad story or something in between?
Seth Godin: No, I read that when she wrote it. I agree with Tina so often. The, the folks she's talking about are still there. They're just not as popular.
My blog traffic is down 80%. 'cause Google hates blogs. Yeah. And I decided that my response to that would be to change nothing. But what they want me to do is start feeding the algorithm. Right. I'm fortunate that I don't depend on inbound X, Y, or Z to feed my family. If you do, you need to find a strategy.
That works with or on a system that can earn you the money you need in return for the effort you make. But if you're okay with not a lot of people reading your work, there's plenty of passionate, weird, odd, magical stuff still being shared online. It's only when people say, and. I wanna be a Kardashian too.
That's when you have a conflict and that's not gonna get solved. The long tail is real. And what people didn't understand when Chris wrote about it is it enables Jamaican poker music, but it also decreases the number of people who are watching, you know, the latest Netflix show, you can't have both. So the hits are less hide and the long tail is ever longer. Half of the songs on iTunes have not been listened to more than three times in the last year. Wow. But go ahead, make music. It's okay.
Jay Acunzo: You've used a couple terms that I wanna make sure we define in your parlance. Um, most recently you said status and you also pointed to status and use that term in the story of the recumbent bicycle. Another one is affiliation. Mm-Hmm. And in the book you write about. The, the interplay. You actually used an example of the, with the movie Dune, uh, which I found like the perfect marriage of like the book and this show. I was like, oh, you're crafting a narrative. You're talking about how a, a storyteller could use these terms, but can you just quickly explain status and affiliation and do they harmonize conflict or something else?
Seth Godin: I can go as narrative as you want. Do you want me to do the whole thing inside the Dune universe?
Jay Acunzo: We've been nerdy today, so let's just keep going. I think we're on that train already.
Seth Godin: Okay, so status is who eats lunch first? Status is the Reverend Mother, the Benny Jeer. It's where you rank in the guild status is being a Duke versus being someone below a Duke who eats lunch first is hardwired into us.
Affiliation is what it is to be a member of the F Remen, right? That affiliation is someone's got your back to the left and to the right that if you are walking around the planet Arki and you. Expectorate and spit on the ground, you'll be ostracized. 'cause people like us don't do things like that. Do you fit in?
So if you open a still suit manufacturer on on arki and you make good still suits, you can charge a lot for them. 'cause that would be high status. And if they're effective and they start being embraced, it would be a sign of affiliation. So we do all of these things in our lives without mentioning both of those, but in the back of our head.
That's what's going on. The short way to think about this is life is high school. What lunch table you sitting at? Who's going to senior prom? With who? Who's the homecoming? Whatever. It's still going on. It's do you have friends who's above you, who's below you? And we keep struggling with both of those or dancing with them or embracing them.[00:40:00]
Jay Acunzo: Seth, don't tell me that. I have an older daughter. We have, I, she's only almost six and already I’m like… Are you six or are you 16? Like waltzing around the school. Like she's the queen of the plate. Like I don't want to hear that. I just wanted high school to be high school. Right. I'm in trouble with her.
Seth Godin: Oh, you're in trouble.
Jay Acunzo: Oh, I am. I'm in a lot of trouble. I'm in a lot of trouble. I. Speaking of people who have, uh, opinions and are ostentatious and probably waltz around wherever they go, waving at everybody, queen of the place. I want to end. Uh, invoking your friend of mine, Margot Aaron. She sent me something and I was like, this is actually perfect for when I chat with Seth.
She forwarded me something from the writer, George Saunders, who had, it was a prompt from one of his readers that he wanted to share out to the world, which is this person was struggling and asked George, what's the role or the purpose or the utility? Of the storyteller in our world today, and you can see how that person might have arrived at if you spend much time on the internet at all.
So I'd put that to you, Seth. You know, Margot sent it to me in all caps. I'll just politely say it to you. What do you see as the role of the storyteller or the purpose or the utility in our world today?
Seth Godin: So, as I learned from my friend Bernadette jwa, storytelling is the basic human technology. It's the first thing that made people, people.
And once we have a roof over our head enough to eat and health, all there is is story. That's it. Story is not once upon a time. Charles Moshe is an example of a story, but so is the way it smells when you go into a house, at an open house. So is how you feel when you wake up in the morning. It's all a story. So I would answer the question with, well, what else is there?
Jay Acunzo: That is Seth Godin, his new book, “This is Strategy” is out now. Go to Seth’s blog, seths.blog, seths.blog. How Stories Happen was created by me Jay Acunzo, and it's produced by Ilana Nevins, cover art by Blake, Inc. If you're looking to become a stronger storyteller in your work to stand out through substance not hollow stunts, visit jay acunzo.com and while you're there, any number of things.
Number one, I just launched a brand new anthem for storytellers, which you can find at the top of the page. It's a video anthem for storytellers. Number two, a free newsletter. I write every Friday to my audience about storytelling, about substance and resonance frameworks for crafting stronger ideas that are more insightful and more personal.
And you can also explore my services while you're there. I help people develop their signature speeches, their messaging. I help folks who have substance and expertise become stronger public voices. All of that is@jayacunzo.com. Thank you so much for listening to the show. Thank you for caring about the work the way you do, and as always, keep making what matters.
See ya.