Seth Godin's best tactics for building remarkable products, strategies, brands and more

0:00 Before you came on, I asked on Twitter, what should I ask Seth Goden? The most recurring theme actually had to do with AI. How do you think all these new AI companies build brands to distinguish and differentiate themselves? AI very soon is gonna stop being a feature. The same way electricity is not a feature. What AI companies and all companies need to do is say, What's in this for the user? What promise do I want to make? A difficult promise, a remarkable promise. And then how do I keep it? You wrote a new book. You basically talk about how a great strategy has tension at the center of it. Tension is at the heart of every art form and every innovation. What we do when we launch a new product, we say, We have this thing. That can do X, and now the person is imagining what their life might be like. If that were true. If they fall in love with that possibility. Now there's tension. Did you tell the truth? Is it going to work for them? There's the the section that stuck out to me, these kind of

0:54 or insights that basically determine what your life is gonna be like outside of actually building the product. For a product person, these are the critical choices and you probably have glossed over them. Today my guest is Seth Godin. Seth is an absolute legend. He's published twenty one books, including eighteen international bestsellers. He's been blogging every single day for almost ten. Thousand days in a row now.

1:25 His writing and his advice have inspired me. And so many people all over the world for the past few decades. He shares wisdom and advice around stuff that everyone can benefit from, including how ideas spread. When to quit. How to lead.

1:39 How to stand out. And most of all, how to change everything. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth has founded several companies, including Yo Yo Dine and Squiddoo. He also started the Alt NBA program. And as you'll hear in our conversation, he actually started his career as a product manager. In our conversation, Seth shares advice on how to know if you have good taste.

2:00 And how to build your taste. How to build a brand in an increasingly crowded world of AI startups and AI content. His thoughts on the Jaguar rebrand and also the Tesla Cybertruck. We also delve into his new book, This Is Strategy. Including why every great strategy has tension at its center.

2:16 Why you need to understand the systems within which you operate in order to build a great strategy. And how choosing your customers, your distribution strategy, and how you validate your idea will inform the product you build and the life that you live. We also talk about how he used Claude as a writing assistant in developing this new book. This episode is short and packed with insights, which I know is what y'all love. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube. It's the best way to avoid missing future episodes and helps the podcast tremendously.

2:46 With that I bring you Seth Godin. Seth, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast. What a treat, Lenny. Thank you for having me. Lenny was My late mom's nickname. So it's good to say it out loud.

3:02 That's so cool. I've never heard it used for a woman and every Lenny out there I've met is wonderful. So I imagine she's wonderful. First I just wanna say how honored I am to have you on this podcast. Uh when I actually started this podcast, I was like And I was listening to you on Tim Ferris at that point. I was like, man, what if one day I get Seth Goden on my podcast? How cool would that be? I've read so many of your books. I have a bunch of them in the bookshelf back there. I reference your stuff all the time. So thank you again for for giving us. Well, thank you. It's a treat to talk to you.

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5:08 Get$1,000 off Vanta when you go to banta.com slash Penny. That's V A N T A dot com slash Lenny. I wanna start by asking a question that One of your former colleagues suggested ask you Wes Cow, I imagine you remember Wes. Of course. Wes and I sat in a room just the two of us for

5:28 Yours. So what she's suggested ask you, and this question I love, is she I asked her, what did you learn most from Seth Godin working with him? And she immediately said, It's Helping her build better taste. And

5:42 Increase your standards, having really high standards. So I wanna First of all, just how do you know if you have good taste and high standards? And then how do you build? Good taste and higher standards.

5:54 Great question. Thank you, West. Um I define good taste as knowing what other people want just before they do. So if you're the only person who wants uh

6:05 Peanut butter covered liquorish. You're entitled to eat peanut butter covered licorice, but you don't have good taste'cause everyone else thinks that's weird. And People f whether they're jazz musicians or Fabric designers.

6:18 are seen as having good taste when they bring something to the world that the world Didn't necessarily expect, but is glad. To see. What do you find helps so West learned fr watching you? But she realized like, okay, my standards are not nearly as high as as they could be.

6:34 Uh Other than working with you Maybe that's the answer is work with people like you that have really high standards. Just what do you find is most helpful in helping people build? Taste and also just some Increase their standards.

6:46 Standards It it's worth understanding what quality is, and the people who listen to this podcast know better than most. Quality is not luxury. Quality is not perfection. Quality means meeting spec.

6:58 And if you meet spec You're done. If you don't think the spec is good enough, make a better spec. But if you meet spec, you're done. And

7:05 So what it means to have high standards Is That you relentlessly Improve the spec in service. of the people

7:13 you are working with and for. And What it doesn't mean. is that you take something that meets spec and refuse to ship it. Because you're a perfectionist. That's hiding.

7:24 And So what I learned At Spinnaker, where I had my first job. real job is product manager. was

7:31 This idea. Yeah. We weren't there to make perfect for us, we were there to To delight. the person who was buying the software.

7:40 And Our standards were Untouchable, we said. If that person, the one we're describing Is delighted with what we shipped?

7:50 It's good. And if they're not It doesn't matter what kind of excuses we have. This is the opposite of what most people in this job do. Which is they say, How do I please my boss?

8:00 And if you're just doing your job. Then Don't expect to get rewarded for more than just doing your job. Because we can find lots of people who can just do your job. That reminds me of one of your other really uh

8:12 powerful pieces of advice about how No matter your job. There's kind of a tangent, but I really stuck with me once I read you or your advice here is no matter what job you have, you couldn't Love it, enjoy it, be amazing at it, even if you're just like a You know, waitress or whatever. You just talk through that'cause that's so powerful. Well,

8:30 I think I got it from the late Reverend Martin Luther King Junior. And the idea is There's no perfect job. that you know, a friend of mine, Tim is a famous uh jazz saxophonist.

8:42 And he's gotta sleep from city to city, and he's gotta play to half empty rooms, and he's gotta deal with this and deal with this. So you're never gonna have unlimited artistic freedom. But what we all have is the ability to understand where the boundaries of our work

8:58 Lie and go there. And If you're A barista and you've chosen to be a barista, maybe because it's the best thing you could get. Well, you're not gonna get the next hour over again.

9:09 So what would it be like To be the best barista in the world for an hour. Would that be worth it for you? Because I've had menial jobs in food service and I gotta tell you, when the boss forces you to be mediocre and bored?

9:23 There's no amount of money they can pay you to do that job. But if you're there and you have a chance To add the light to someone's day. You're doing that for you. Not because you're getting paid.

9:34 And you could totally tell these people in the world when you you know, you go to Barista that just can tell is just loves her job. Like I know, imagine she knows this is not you know, her career long term, but she just embraces it and just has fun with it. There's so much power to that. kind of on a different note. You mentioned that you're a product manager, which I did not know. That's amazing. So most of the people listening to this podcast are product managers. They're either product managers, founders, people that want to be founders, And then people that work with product managers.

10:01 So first of all, I guess could you just share that part of your life?'Cause I don't think people know that. Alright, so the origin story could take all day, but I'm not gonna tell the whole thing. I'm gonna tell the part That I thought was normal that Turned out to be the luckiest thing in the world. The summer is between the

10:15 The two years of business school are very important to establish your Uh career arc. I got a job at Spinner Software. Spinnaker invented educational computer games. I was the sturdiest employee. And

10:27 The summer was spent doing assistant brand manager kind of stuff, going to meetings with the ad agency, writing copy. But at the end of the summer. They had a lovely going away party for me. 'Cause I was flying back to California. And then at the end

10:41 The president of the company, the chairman of the company, and the head of marketing. Bring me into this beside where they say we have a secret project. We want you to work for us while you're at business school. And we're all gonna pay you almost nothing. Okay, what's the secret project?

10:54 We're gonna do Computer adventure games. With illustrations. And music based on science fiction novels. And we've already acquired the work of Ray Bradbury.

11:05 And Arthur C Clark. Now I had read every science fiction book in the Clearfield Public Library from Asimov to Zelazny. This was the dream come true. But they thought my job was gonna be make the packaging and run the ads. And what I discovered

11:19 First of all is that I couldn't really go back to business school, so I showed up hardly at all at Stanford and just You know, took a lot of red eyes. But I discovered That

11:30 The engineers, the development team. They had a lot of people. vying for their time. And if I didn't figure out how to get them to give me way more than my fair share of development, I wasn't gonna have any products to make next Christmas and then I was gonna be out of A job.

11:46 And so I started a newsletter internally. I was one of the first people in the world to have desktop publishing because I was a beta tester for the Mac. And in it, I would mention anybody in the engineering team. Who had worked. on my project and I would say something good about them. And then I would print it out and put it in every single person's

12:03 Inner office mailbox. And Within three months, four months Partly because the project Was really good.

12:11 Forty engineers were working for me. And no one was reporting to me. And so I became the de facto product manager. And that is when I learned

12:21 Marketing is the product. You don't make a product and then hand it to some marketing Yahoo and say, Go put a a logo on this. That the product we made

12:31 and five in a row went gold. Saved the company. the product is why it worked. And so I was supposed to know how to code, but I didn't. And so but I could be in the room.

12:45 And I The last month Radio Shack had bought. Uh Uh how many units.

12:50 Uh three thousand stores times five times five. A lot of units. And if we had missed a date. they were gonna cancel the order and the company would go bankrupt. And the software wasn't even close to done. And we didn't have any source control like we do now. There was no cloud. So it was all in my head.

13:07 So I did not leave the office. I'm not exaggerating this. I did not leave the office for the last twenty two days. Slept for four hours a night upstairs. And If anyone had a question.

13:17 I could tell them who to talk. That was so thrilling. It was so swing to make those decisions. Two Cajole this team, none of whom were in it for the money.

13:28 To make something we were proud of. And then The stuff ships. Everyone else goes home. to sleep for a month, but I am the project manager and the marketing guy. So I gotta stay at work.

13:38 And the next day the phone rings. And it's Herbie Hancock on the phone. The great Jazz musician. And Herbie says the the f the receptionist said you're the person in charge of Fahrenheit four fifty one.

13:50 I said. Herbie? I'm twenty four years old, right? A Herbie? And he went on and on about How he had stayed all night to play it.

13:59 And that he loved it. Uh, I love how many how much how natural of a product manager you were in the th these things you shared of just thinking everyone deflecting credit and all these things. It's Sign of a great. PM. On these lines I wanted to ask actually, so

14:12 Europe early on. Now you're obviously spent a lot of time marketing. I know you're saying there's obviously strong connections between the two, but Is there anything you find that people building the product most often miss or misunderstand that just annoys you, or do you think they need to hear? Maybe I got seven, but I'll I'll try to do them off the top of my head. Uh the first one is this.

14:31 Uh. Empathy is not about kindness and empathy is not an option. This is something that you are making for other people. So the whole idea of Uh.

14:42 Read the manual, I'm angry at you. If if you're saying that to your customers, you made a mistake. They did not make a mistake. The second one is Yeah. The thing about

14:53 projects is when you run out of time and you run out of money. The project is over. Don't run out of time. Don't run out of money. Good intentions are no reason.

15:02 For an extension. The professional doesn't ask for an extension'cause the professional understands Yeah. Things you didn't expect are gonna happen.

15:11 That's Part of the deal. Right. And um I guess the third one would be for software, particularly software as a service.

15:21 If you don't build the network effect into what you are making. You're almost certainly gonna fail. You cannot Hope. that Apple's gonna pick you, promote you, and magically have you be successful.

15:33 The question is Will this work better for my users? If they tell other people about it. And if the answer is no, then why would they tell other people about it? And if they don't tell other people about it

15:45 No one's gonna hear about it. But if the answer is yes Then your marketing problem is pretty much solved. There I feel like each of these is like its own book that we could talk through and I wanna come back to this last point. And how it relates to the purple cow. I wanna spend a little time there. But first I'm gonna ask a marketing question. So before you came on, I asked on Twitter, what should I ask Sad Goat and he's coming on my podcast.

16:04 I got a flood of uh suggestions. The most recurring theme actually had to do with AI. Actually the co founder of Intercom asked this question and it kind of echoes what many people are wondering. So his question is how do you think all these new AI companies

16:17 build brands to distinguish and differentiate themselves. in a world that's increasingly filled with AI companies, AI products, AI content. Well the first question is what's a brand? 'Cause it's not a logo. A brand is a promise.

16:30 It's what do I expect from you? It would I miss you if you were gone. And Hyatt Hotels has a logo. Nike has a brand.

16:39 The way we know this is if Nike opened Uh if Nike Opened a hotel we'd know what it Would be like. But if Hyatt decided to make sneakers, we have no clue.

16:48 But they might be comfortable, but that's all we would know. And so if you want to build a brand You gotta stand for something and you gotta say what you don't do. And the second thing is A I

17:00 very soon is gonna stop being a feature. The same way electricity is not a feature. That lots and lots of things run on electricity, but they're not electricity companies. They just happen to use electricity. So

17:13 What AI companies and all companies need to do is say What's in this for the user? What promise do I want to make? A difficult promise, a remarkable promise. And then how do I keep it?

17:26 So Making Absurd promises. might work. at the VC level.

17:32 But it doesn't work when you're talking to consumers because you can only break that promise one time. And So You know, to wrap up the brand part. Airlines don't have brands and airlines don't have loyalty.

17:44 And the way we know this Is that the only reason people stick with an airline is for the points. Which is bribery. Loyalty is Would you pay extra? To stick with this.

17:54 And if you wouldn't pay extra, then the brand has no value. I love this phrase, make a promise and keep it. And the AI element. This wing makes it. That raises the bar because

18:04 Many more promises are being made. Fewer promise are probably being kept. So is the advice there. continue making an ambitious promise. And then the key is actually deliver on that. And that's what builds your brand. Yeah, and th you know.

18:16 I have a very emotional connection to Cloud dot A. I. I think they have a brand. Chat GPT's reputation with me. Yeah. Not good. Because

18:26 It regularly over promises and under delivers. And it does it without kindness or humility. Whereas Claude, I don't know how they did it. At least in my experience.

18:37 Brings. Kindness and humility so when it doesn't know, it's very clear. And it's not lazy and it's not angry at me. And so I happily pay extra for Claude.

18:47 Because it has a brand. Whereas uh chat GPT for me is just a tool that I use if I have other no other options. I love the uh Anthropic slash Claude's uh billboards. We're the ones without the drama.

19:00 The I AI company without the drama. Um I was gonna say this at the end, but let's actually talk about it. So you

19:07 mentioned somewhere that you actually use Claude to help you write this book and refine the book. Which I think Is it gonna increasingly happen? Uh, could you just share that process of how you did that? Like what what did you do that might be helpful to people to help you write this book? Well, to be clear about my brand promise,'cause it's true. Every word that has my name on it I wrote.

19:26 Every blog post, every book. I don't have a team. This is my whole staff is me. What I did with Claude and which I encourage people to do in the book is I would Upload a list of four things and say, which what did I miss?

19:39 And it would suggest three things to complete the list and Often They would be things I hadn't thought of, and then I could go right about that. Or I would

19:48 Um upload a couple of chapters and I would say what are the claims I'm making here that you don't think are sustainable can be that I'm sustaining. Right. And

19:58 It became this patient Uh Editor. that is so hard to find in the real world because editors aren't paid enough and given enough time to do their job right.

20:11 And What I find Is If I have A sentence that doesn't sound enough.

20:18 Like me? I can ask Claude. To help me. Figure out why that's true. I love that. Uh

20:25 tactic of getting Using it to figure out what you missed. I I feel like you agree with this. I find that most of it when I write part of it is I'm putting an idea out there. I want to see what I got wrong and what I missed. And I like that you basically skip that step and don't put it out and just make the thing you put out actually better.

20:42 Well, you know, the thing about blogging every day Is At first It felt like how am I gonna keep up? But once I could build a queue,'cause I didn't want my streak to end.

20:55 How long is the streak at this point, by the way? Uh I Post number ten thousand comes out at the beginning of twenty twenty five. Oh my god. In a row.

21:04 In a row. Um Some days there were two. Uh, but what I found as I got a little bit of a cue is that I would feel bad'cause I had something to say, but I couldn't'cause there was already one in the queue.

21:17 So I shift from I have to write something too. I get to write something. And now because I've Taking the pressure off.

21:27 I have time to rewrite it because I don't have a m uh a shortage of ideas for tomorrow. I have extra one. This episode is brought to you by Paragon, the developer platform for building native customer-facing integrations with third party apps. Our native integrations on your product roadmap, whether it's to ingest context from your user's external data and documents, or to sync data and automate tasks across your user's other apps, integrations are mission critical for B2B software products today. But building these integrations in-house cost an average of three months of engineering, according to the 2024 State of Integration Survey, which results in difficult roadmap trade-offs.

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22:25 Visit useparagon.com slash Lenny to see how Paragon can help you accelerate your product's integration roadmap today and get$1,000 in credit on their pro and enterprise plans. That's UsePar G O N.com. So let's talk about your book. You wrote a new book. Uh It's called This a Strategy. I've been reading it over the past week and I've been so uh into it that I actually left it at my mother in law's house. I don't have it with me. So it's called This is Strategy. It's about how to build strategy, how to develop a strategy.

22:57 There's a lot. to love about the book, but there's the the section kind of in the middle that is what most stuck to stuck out to me. That I wanna spend a little time on. You kind of have these this four sequence of advice that I love. So I'm just gonna read it real quick.

23:12 Choose your customers. Choose your future. Choose your competition. and choose your future, choose the source of validation and you choose your future. Choose your distribution and you're also choosing your future.

23:23 Right. Can you just talk through these kind of four insights, these four steps that basically determine what your product and life is going to be like outside of actually building the product. Yeah, and and For a product person. Please.

23:35 are the critical choices and you probably have glossed over them. You have probably assumed it's a given. And you've sacrificed your agency over the four most important things you should be choosing. So the first one is

23:49 Picking your customers. If your motto is uh You can pick anyone and we're anyone. If your hope is that you have to win SEO to get anything.

24:00 You're not gonna succeed. When you choose your smallest viable audience. what language they speak, how much money they have, what problem they're trying to solve, what their technical facility is. Whether they're short tempered, whether they're kind, whether they're gonna stick with you. You have chosen

24:16 Everything that's gonna go into the product and what your future is going to be like. And So you know, the humane Pin people. Whatever it was called made a mistake when they picked their customers.

24:29 Because they showed up like they had a finished apple quality product. And they were trying to appeal to the kind of people that would buy on pre order a finished quality product. When they ship something that wasn't that And they knew it wasn't that. They're doomed.

24:46 Right. Whereas if you say Here we are in product hunt. We're only looking for four hundred people. We're looking for people who like the raspberry pie.

24:53 Who wants to to walk with this thing? Now you can dance and you can have all these other things happen. Because you picked a different customer. If you decide to be a wedding photographer in the Hamptons Well, you better expect to have some very

25:07 Spoiled. Cranky. Brides and grooms and grooms and grooms and brides and brides. That you have to deal with'cause you picked your customers. Okay.

25:16 So then the second one, which comes with that. Is who's your competition? 'Cause if you're competing against Walmart Why are you surprised that they keep lowering their prices? That's what Walmart does.

25:26 Right. That when you decide which space That you're going to operate in. You've built an enormous set of boundaries. Around what you do.

25:36 The third one is validation. If you are trying to please your boss That's what you're going to do. If on the other hand, you can have one difficult conversation with your boss and say, Can we agree? Then I'm not trying to match your taste.

25:51 I'm trying to match the taste of these four hundred people that we've agreed are our customers. Every other meeting is gonna go way better from now on. Because You've made it clear. Who

26:00 You're trying to please. to your distribution. matters a lot in the software business, for example. A video game. Which is where I started.

26:10 We were in target and leachmir and mass merchants. Our competitors were in Ziploc bags and computer stores. Well When something like steam shows up. When something like

26:20 um downloadable shareware shows up. Everything about your product changes. So Again. These four things

26:29 Are choices and if you're glossing over them it's'cause you're afraid. And I think it's important to note it's not like you can just change these at will and just like, okay, cool, we'll change your distribution. These are interwined. But the important point here that I hear is just like make sure the product you're building understands this is how you will be distributed. This is who you're selling to. Right. Yeah. I mean so a friend just sent me a a business plan. They're making a

26:52 Uh A food product. And They're saying we're going to distribute on Shopify and we're also gonna sell

26:59 To businesses, airports, hotels, and people who need to sell the food. I'm like There's only two of you. No, that's not what your business you gotta pick. Today, before you even turn the page, Who are you for?

27:14 And who are you not for? Along the lines of picking your customer reminds me a friend of mine started a company selling a product to real estate agents. And she just warned me, Be careful who you're selling to,'cause you're gonna be spending a lot of time with these people. Make sure you're ready to be doing that. One of my very first books was a advertising supported directory.

27:32 Paid for by law firms. Uh this is not something I want to recommend to anybody. Another great nugget from the book that uh really stood out to me is this idea of tension, the importance of tension. You basically talk about how a great strategy has tension at the center of it.

27:50 Why is tension so important to a good strategy? Okay, so let's agree that tension and stress aren't the same thing. Stress is generally not good. Stress is Two things at the same time. I want to leave, I need to stay.

28:03 Right? I hate my boss, but I need this job. That's stress. Don't Look for stress. Tension.

28:10 is at the heart of every art form. And every innovation. Tension is it might not work. Tension is that And the other person says

28:20 Because They need to finish the sentence. So What we do when we launch a new product. Is we say

28:27 We have this thing that can do X. And now the person is imagining what their life might be like. If that were true. If they fall in love with that possibility. Now there's tension.

28:40 Did you tell the truth? Is it going to work for them? And You know, when I was a kid, Pf flyers Where the sneaker to get. This was before Nike. And the promise of PF flyers.

28:50 was that they would finally make you fast enough to run away from the bully. And I remember ten years old walking into that shoe store. And there was real tension in my head'cause I needed to get away from that bully. And I was

29:03 keeping the PF fires people to their promise. And they Didn't tell the truth. It comes back to your point about not Not uh delivering on the promise that you make to build a a great brand, right? Okay. I want to take a little tangent into Purple Cow territory.

29:18 I have your book. Right here, by the way, uh I have many of your books in the back. I don't wanna make my library. Oh, what is that? A milk cart and this is the first ten thousand copies came in a milk carton. Oh man, I missed out on that. Uh was there any purple milk inside. What cow what color is your is like purple cow's milk?

29:36 We'll never know. We'll never know. I know you've talked about this concept a gazillion times. I feel like still people Don't actually Many people haven't heard it. Many people don't

29:47 Truly understand it. And it's the thing that I reference most of your piece of advice. Can you spend a little time just chatting about this topic of the purple cow of the importance of being remarkable? Okay, so let's start with Steve Blank. I'm sure you've talked about his idea of customer attraction. The single best way to tell if a startup's got any hope whatsoever is

30:06 Do the people who engage with you stick around? Do they Come back for more. The second piece is that Do they tell their friends? And if they tell their friends.

30:17 What do they say? The word remarkable means worth making a remark about. So I'm not talking about coming up with some viral video that's ridiculous and it's gimmicky. I'm saying If you make something

30:32 Where the person's life gets better if they talk about you. And you know in advance what you want them to say? Then They are more likely to say it. So Marissa Mayer

30:43 probably created more Uh uh stock market value than any other uh product manager I can think of. And the way she did it

30:53 Was There weren't very many people at Google. But she was the one who said, No, you can't put another button on the home page. There are only gonna be two buttons on the home page. And over and over and again.

31:04 At the time I was at Yahoo. Yeah, we had the chance to buy Google for ten million dollars while I was there. That's a whole interesting story. But Yahoo at one hundred and eighty three.

31:15 Links on the home page. And Google had Two. And the statement built into that. Is

31:23 We are making you a promise. And the promise is We are smart enough. To take you where you want to go without you spending a lot of time browsing through one hundred and eighty three links. Tell us what you want.

31:35 It will take you there. And so I was a Yeah. Tech forward person.

31:40 And if a friend came to me Lost on the internet, confused about something, I just send them to Google. 'Cause I knew they wouldn't come back to me for more help. Because okay, fine. They're gone. It's gonna work. That's what to say about Google at its launch is

31:53 Hey. Just type in what you want and you'll find it. They built that into the product. That makes it remarkable because I wanted to tell other people about that'cause it would raise my status. as a tech innovator.

32:05 And the implication here, and you talked about this is that most likely the way you will win is word of mouth. It's hard to win with Bay ads, it's hard to win with sales teams unless you're, you know, building B to B software. What you need to focus on is how to get build something people tell their friends about. And the core of that is being remarkable.

32:24 And I love just the way you break it down. Being remarkable is being something people remark about. Yeah, and and if you think it's just for small companies. That's how Microsoft beat Word Perfect. Because Microsoft Word was uh

32:39 the format you needed your co workers to work in. If you were using uh a a modern computer 'Cause if they insisted on using word perfect, then you were stuck with word perfect. Whereas They had a migration path and once you migrated

32:52 You didn't go back. So again It's in my interest to insist you use word. So I did. This point about Mercer Mayer, uh of doing this thing that was kind of

33:02 Uh controversial. It comes back to your point of creating tension. Created and feels like it created tension both with visitors and Internally. There's also these quotes that I have here that are along these lines that you've said in the past. I don't think they're in this book. If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try.

33:19 And safety is risky. Is there anything you want to say there? Well so One of the things I talk about in the book is that systems are everywhere we look. And they're largely invisible taken for granted.

33:31 I spend time with high school seniors talking about college. They don't see The college industrial complex. They just think it's normal. 'Cause that's what it is to grow up in the suburbs.

33:41 And What systems do to protect themselves. Is they invent culture. Culture is the way things are around here. And so if you think something is scary, that's

33:53 Probably'cause the system wants you to think that. And So you shouldn't do something foolhardy. You shouldn't be. Fearless.

34:02 But what you should do is think about why does it scare me? To do this. What system will be offended if If I do that. Am I trying? To work with the system.

34:13 Or am I Leveraged enough to help. Change. The system. And so the first people who put up downloadable software

34:21 All the feedback which you can't do that'll be pirated, you'll never make a penny. Okay, that might happen. And I can see why that feels scary. But I could also see why the dominant system of software distribution doesn't want me to even experiment with this. But I only worked on the software for five months. Let's try it.

34:40 'Cause if it doesn't work and it gets pirated, I'll just have to make new software. It's okay. It's interesting, the uh opposite of that was also true with uh Salesforce. Their whole picture was no software, it's all in the cloud. Once that became the system, right? That became the tension in the in the the risky move. Yeah.

34:56 So you have this quote actually. I wanna spend more time on the system concept because it's so core to the book. And so core to your advice for how to be better. You have this actual quote. What does it mean to be a strategic thinker? It means to see the system. What else can you share about just for people that are trying to become better strategically to understand what you mean when you talk about the system, how to see the system? We have to invent systems any time we engage with other human beings. Because interoperability is essential.

35:25 There's a system for how we greet other people. In our culture. Uh you shake Hands, right hand to right hand. And

35:33 Just show up sometime and give the Vulcan salute instead and watch what happens. It's very awkward. Because We just needed to get this over with and now that's part of the system. And So systems serve a valuable function.

35:47 Until they don't. Because then the system starts doing things. to support itself, to reinforce itself. So for example, there is a system It says We should

35:59 Interview people for jobs. And the most successful interviews are people where They show that they are like us. They look like us, they went to schools like us, they have privilege and background like us.

36:11 That is toxic. Because it diminishes not just diversity But our ability to put real talent on the team. And

36:21 If you don't see that system and name that system. You're gonna keep doing what you were doing. And I was talking to someone yesterday who said They had been working with a company. And the last

36:30 Four people that they had hired. had been captain of their Ivy League Tennis team. Right? Well, clearly there's a pattern here. And it's being reinforced by people who don't want to get in trouble.

36:43 But the system's not helping them. And So Yes, we need uh the metric system and we need the zip code system. Those keep working really well.

36:54 But if you're trying Two Show up in a place where dominant players Don't want you to succeed. You're gonna have to find something in the system.

37:03 That gives you a chance. To change the rules. Yeah, this metaphor that I love that's kind of along these lines of Better waves make better servers. That a lot of your success is driven by choosing the way versus the skills that you have. Can you just talk about that?

37:17 Yeah, so um It's Surprising profound. I don't know where I ga came up with it, but When I see people who are great at surfing.

37:28 They're almost always on good waves. And My son who surfs a lot, I have noticed Passes up. Waves that other people might take.

37:37 waiting for the right wave because he knows he will be able to surf it better. So When you think about Which company you're signing up to bring software from which Uh people

37:48 you're willing to put on the key roles. Are you willing to wait For the superstar who's gonna change things. Or Are you in so much of a hurry to make an imaginary deadline that you're gonna ship mediocre work? 'Cause all mediocre means is average.

38:02 And so if you don't want to be mediocre You better do something different. than the other people are doing. Otherwise. You're gonna get what the other people are getting. As you talk about this, I'm thinking about I don't know if you saw Jaguars rebrand and their whole launch and uh uh feels like it's been rejected by the system. Uh

38:19 Any thoughts on on that? Maybe what they got wrong or maybe maybe it was genius. Okay, so You've you've picked a a topic that I really like to talk about. Jaguar did not rebrand, Jaguar re logoed. And The logo might be a sign

38:34 That they're trying to rebrand. And make a different promise, and they are switching to all electric, which I'm in favor of. But They made, I think, a very significant error. Which is

38:46 If you're going to start a car company A hundred million or a billions are gonna get spent earning trust from people who never heard of you. If you're starting. With one of the most iconic and beautiful and beloved Car brands.

39:02 that has the luxury of having almost no cars in the world. That could undermine What you want to stand for going forward. It's perfect. Own that. That's brilliant. And to walk away from that so that you could please

39:16 Some art director? I don't understand why you think your rebranding when you just put a logo on that undermines Many of the awareness assets you already had going for. Feels like they got very, you know, very controversial. They

39:31 Went against the status quo. Uh more maybe than the sho I don't know. What do you what would you have done if you were them? You may recall when the international house of pancakes decided to falsely announced they were changing their name to the International House of Burgers.

39:44 And like made a new logo'cause they wanted buzz. This is a Wendy's Twitter tactic. Buzz does not sell hamburgers. That Oreos got a lot of buzz when they did that tweet about

39:55 uh the Super Bowl blackout. There's no evidence they sold even one more cookie. That's they're not in the business of entertaining us. So Jaguar isn't gonna sell more cars.

40:07 Because people like you and I are talking about their re logoing. What's gonna make them sell cars? Is customer traction. What they need to do is find fifty people

40:18 Who have Authority. And Get them in a car. That changes them somehow.

40:24 that transforms them. And you know, it's interesting if you think about Uh Two things that Tesla did right at the beginning with the model S. The first one is, according to someone I know who worked there at the time.

40:36 The number one thing people would talk about when they saw you in the parking lot of the supermarket. Was The door handles. Because the door handles. Popped out.

40:45 They popped out in a way that's sort of annoying and dangerous, but it was noticeable. So there was a conversation. And then what would happen is They'd say, What do you think of it? And you'd say, Get in the car. And you switch to ludicrous mode.

40:59 And you drive at zero to sixty in two point four seconds and they'd start screaming. This was fun for you and told a story to the passenger. This is how customer traction begins. Because I can't do that in a different car.

41:14 Right? Compare this to the clown car, the cyber truck, which was intentionally divisive, and And Most people Don't wanna

41:24 Not only drive one, but have one on their block. Because Divisiveness is not selling. That what selling is is

41:32 Being Of utility. to help someone get what they want. So here you have a category, the pickup truck, the number one category for all cars in the United States. Just sitting there waiting to be taken.

41:43 You can cross the chasm. If If you're someone like Tesla. And instead They decide to pull a stunt.

41:50 And That's Not okay. It's not good product management, it's not good marketing. Mm-hmm. Interesting. So you think

41:57 Cybertrike not gonna be a success. Well I think Compared to what? Right. So the Ford F one fifty. Some years has made more than a hundred percent of Ford's profit.

42:08 Meaning without the Ford. one fifty pickup truck, there is no Ford. That's how big a category that is. You have a car. with momentum and a public company where you've earned the trust of a lot of people.

42:20 Now you have a category pickup trucks. That are purchased for a very specific reason. To show your neighbors you care about utility. Even if you never used the bed. That's the story of driving a pickup truck.

42:33 So now If you bring people in that category who are Inherently skeptical of change. And Inherently skeptical of

42:41 Design trickery. Something that is nothing but change and design trickery. No, they're not going to adopt it. You could have sold An enormous number.

42:52 Of People who might have bought a Ford one hundred fifty instead. Yeah. Crossing of the chasm is how you become Really significant.

43:01 Feel like this alone could be its own separate podcast conversation. I wish we had more time. I'm gonna ask one last question. Uh and this is A quote that I found of yours that I also love that is reminiscent of us of Elon Musk, actually, as we were just talking about this. The secret to leadership is simple.

43:17 Do what you believe. Paint a picture of the future, go there. People will follow. You talk about that. That might be a little too glib.

43:26 Um because Mm-hmm. What I need to highlight is the painting the picture of the future. needs to be based in empathy. You can't paint a picture of where you want to go.

43:38 You have to paint a picture of where they want to go. And it's this Non narcissism. Yeah. is where professionals do their work.

43:48 That you are not entitled. to raise money. You're not entitled To have market share. You're not entitled To get a good price'cause you worked hard.

43:57 What we can do is be of service. We can open the door to help people get to where they always wanted to go. It's very difficult. To change what people want. But it's

44:08 Pretty helpful. to offer people a chance to get to where they Always wanted to go in the first place. Seth, this was a dream come true. I meet appreciate you coming on the podcast. I appreciate you saying that. Uh, where can people check out your book? Where where should people go to learn more about what you're up to? Anything you want to share?

44:25 So I'm not active on social media, but I do have a blog at Seth's dot blog. Uh And if you go to Sest dot blog slash T I S you will find everything you need to know about the book and the strategy deck and the collectible chocolate bar. And whatever other thing I've dreamed up in the meantime. Chocolate.

44:43 Uh, Seth, thank you so much for being here. These were great questions, Lydia. I could talk to you all day. Thank you. I appreciate that. Same. Bye, everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or leaving a review, as that really helps other listeners find the podcast.

45:07 You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny's Podcast.com. See you in the next episode.

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