The Quitting Expert: Quit NOW Before AI Makes The Choice For You, This Is a Superpower! | Seth Godin

0:00 How do I know when to quit something? >> It's okay. You can quit things. >> Hang on a minute. When I went to the gym this morning, there was the Michael Jordan quote. >> If you [music] quit once, it becomes a habit. Never quit. He's wrong. And it's very clear that he's wrong. And I've failed more times than most people are listening to this. And the simple secret for the power of quitting is the dip. And the dip describes something in the world that no one talks about. And so, one of the things I try to do is help people understand it. Because my whole career is about how can I help people do better, find [music] why they're stuck, realize what's holding them back, go solve the problem. Because problems are opportunity. And I believe all problems can be solved. But what we're wrestling now with is people are afraid. People are lonely. People are disconnected. They're victims of all sorts of media and commercial systems. And we've been

0:46 indoctrinated to not notice it. >> So I really want to just focus in on people who feel stuck right now. >> So there's this [music] philosophy which is the key to figuring out our stuckness. The donkey is trapped halfway [music] between the water and the carrot. The donkey is thirsty and hungry, but he's unwilling to move away [music] from either of the things he wants. So, he starves to death and he dies of thirst. And all of us do this and we do it with one simple word, but I want to run the marathon, but I don't want to get tired. I want to have a job that fulfills me, but [music] I also like this car and this house. And so, I can give you tools that can help you overcome resistance. And also I can give you the mechanics to become the person your future self thanks you for. >> And then the skill of overcoming shame or embarrassment [music] might be one of the most important skills in the modern world today. How do I get better at dealing with that?

1:31 >> So let me try to make it really simple. >> The floor is yours. >> So this is super interesting to me. My team given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us according to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So, favor to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button, if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the

2:17 guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of the D ofio and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. [music] Seth Golden, for my audience who have just clicked on this conversation, my question to you is by the time this conversation is done, what do you hope that they're going to come away with? What questions in their life are they going to have answers to? >> Some of your best guests are world experts and they show up and they say, "I did the research. I did the math. Do this because I told you to." And I've never done that. I show up and I try to paint a picture for people of what the words mean and what the systems are like and then encourage you to do things

3:02 because you told. And so what I think we're wrestling now with is people are afraid. People are lonely. People are disconnected. They're victims of all sorts of media and commercial systems. And we've been indoctrinated to not notice it. And there are problems all around us. And if we can solve problems, we can make things better. So what I want to help people do is find the words to talk about their problem, realize what's holding them back, go solve the problem. Because when we solve problems, we make things better for ourselves and for other people. So problems aren't something to be avoided. Problems are are opportunity. And I believe all problems can be solved. Some things aren't problems. They're situations and you have to live

3:48 with them. But if it's a problem, it means there's a solution. And I would like to help people find the vision and the words to see where they're stuck, why they're stuck, and whether it's a problem or a situation. If it's a problem and someone's going to benefit from you solving it, I hope I can give you the mechanics, the tools, the vocabulary to go move forward toward better. >> And what kind of problems specifically do you try and solve for people in your work, but also in this more recent book that you've just written called the not? >> So, I don't solve problems for people, they solve problems for themselves. And when someone points out to you where the problem is, you can now make a new decision. Right? So if someone's applying for college, it's super easy if

4:34 you're 17 years old to get all hung up on I'm about to be judged. How are they going to know the real me? What if I get rejected? Am I a loser? Have I wasted my whole life? But once you see the college industrial complex, once you understand the agenda of the admissions office, once you realize what people are looking at and why, you say, "Oh, this is a game. This is a game like Settlers of Katan or Monopoly. And if I win this game, it's not because I'm a good person. It's because I played the game better. If I lose the game, same thing. Once you see that, all the drama and entanglement of applying for college moves to the side. You say, "What's in it for the admissions officer to see the person I want to present to them? Because if I can solve their problem, I'm going to go to the school I want to go to." Well, that's true in so many

5:21 parts of our lives. is there. We engage with a system or a person or a boss or a co-orker or spouse and we think we're right. We've got all this noise in our head. We think everyone can hear the noise in our head. They can't. We think everyone wants what we want. They don't. And so we show up saying, "It's my turn. I need to get this." And now we have a problem. And the reason we have a problem is because that other person thinks they're as right as we think we're right. And they have a different problem. So we're colliding. But if we can see that all of this is a dynamic within family systems, corporate systems, commercial systems, we can understand what are the forces at work. Now that we see them, we can use

6:08 them to get to where we want to go. >> You know, it's funny because I I go out into the world and I I sit in taxis and I I walk down the street and people come up to me and I get sort of an idea of the personas of people watching. And because I get in a lot of taxis, I have a lot of conversations with taxi drivers. So, they're one persona in my head. And then, you know, the other is maybe like a a mother with with with a kid or two who's trying to make a change in in their sort of later career. For those people, the average person listening right now, >> where is it that they want to go to? And I don't mean specifically, I don't mean job. Where is it that they want to go to and where are they? >> Right? I think most people we meet would like to be seen, missed if they are gone, understood, and of use. Right? That's something that's crosses borders

6:55 and cultures. And yet we end up being a cog in a system. The Uber driver racing around doing things they wouldn't ordinarily do because the system is pushing them to cut every corner. or the mom who's struggling because the financial system that she's stuck in is pushing her away from the kind of work or parenting she wants to do. And many of those things are injustices and some of those things cannot be fixed by an individual. We can accept those as situations. You're not going to change Uber. Uber is going to be the way Uber is going to be. And if you choose to be an Uber driver, the rules of Uber come with it. But other things are things where we get to make a choice. And I'm not saying I want to be really clear. I'm not saying anyone deserves an

7:40 injustice. Anyone deserves where they're are right now. But given who you are, given where you are, what are the choices you do have? And how do we get out of the not the stuckness of wanting two things that we can't have at the same time? Because it's when we want two things at the same time that cannot coexist that we feel stuck. And that feeling of stuckness robs us from the chance to be of use. It robs us from the chance to get to that place that deep down we want to go. So I use the word purpose and what I mean by that is not you're born with a purpose because I don't think you were. But you can choose with intent the purpose of whatever you're going to do tomorrow. That purpose might be I need to get paid.

8:27 That purpose might be I need to get this date. That purpose might be I need to put something on the internet that changes the lives of a thousand people. When you say your purpose out loud, the purpose of this work is so and so. Then I say back to you the very first question which is the key. Who who is this for? Is it for everyone or is it for 12 people or a thousand people? What change are you here to make and for who? And if we can't figure out who the who is, then we feel like there's just this amorphous horrible heavy blanket on us trapping us. But if you can find the five people you can solve a problem for or the 25 people who would miss you, it starts to work. So, let me give you a quick story to help you understand the analogy. You're a stand-up comic. You've

9:13 been working really hard. Um, and your agent calls, I got a great gig. So, you go and there's 100 people there and you bomb. Not one laugh for 10 minutes. And you leave the stage. Then you find out it's a tour group from Italy and no one in the room speaks English. So, who bombed? Right? It's your agent who put you in the wrong room. There was nothing wrong with your jokes. It was a mismatch because the audience didn't speak English. So, you're allowed to say, "It's not for you." When we show up to try to engage with someone it's not for, if we read the comments, if we read the reviews, and someone gives a great book a one-star review, all that one star review says is, "This book wasn't for me." That's all they needed to write. Nothing else in the

9:58 review is helpful because someone else thought it was five-star book. So the author has learned nothing. So we pick who it's for. What is our intent? This person I'm going to help. I'm going to trade with. I'm going to engage. I'm going to sell to or whatever. Who exactly? What do they believe? What do they want? What are they afraid of? If I can solve their problem, they're going to want to engage. And I can be of use. And then I can do it again. and then I can do it again. >> Is this a point about getting unstuck in your current situation? Is it come right back to who you want to serve, their persona, what their needs are, and then focusing on that? Cuz I'm thinking again about this Uber driver who feels somewhat powerless in their life. They

10:43 they they think I've got to sell my time to make this much money, but I'm not satisfied and I'm not fulfilled. So, how does what you've just said sort of dovetail into that person's life? So people sometimes call me a marketer and I had the luxury of starting my career right when television was dying. So before that marketing meant big companies buying ads, interrupting people, hustling them etc. And then it shifted. So I got to define marketing as anything I wanted. And I have defined marketing as telling a true story to the right people in a way that helps them get where they want that they will tell their friends about. If you do those steps, you're not doing any of the icky part. You're being of service. And you don't have to have a budget to do this. We are all marketing. When you walk in

11:30 in tatty jeans to a job interview at an investment bank, you've just marketed yourself by your clothing, right? There's a signal that you chose to send and that they will receive or not receive. So when we think about the agency, the freedom that each of us have, we have the freedom to decide who we're going to show up for and what's the story that's built in. So back to this Uber driver, if you want to make a living driving a car and meeting interesting people, one thing you could do is give up all of your freedom to Uber and let them find you, the passengers. But the other thing you could do is realize that there are 75 people who live in this suburb of your town who need to get somewhere reliably and safely and would be delighted to

12:17 have you be their driver. And when you hand out the right cards to the right people, making it clear what you do and don't do and who you do it for and don't do it for, getting to 15 regular customers is not out of reach >> as a private chauffeur. >> Yeah. that path is a better use of his tomorrow >> than [clears throat] simply being ground out by some social media company or or ride sharing service. >> Bringing it back to this this rope thing over here because I really want to just focus in on people who feel stuck right now. The essence of where I'm trying to go to this conversation is I want to speak to people that currently feel stuck but they know that they're capable of more. They know that they could have another life, but they practically don't understand, I guess, both the psychology, the systems, the mechanisms,

13:03 and I guess what they can control in order to move from where they are to where they want to be. >> Right. >> There's a rope here. Yeah. >> And it serves as a somewhat interesting analogy for I guess being stuck and pulling on the wrong thing. >> Yeah. You sound like a magician. Yeah. Okay. >> I mean, do you know the analogy? Because I don't. >> Yes, I do. So, 2,500 years ago, this guy named Alexander. who didn't have a last name yet, showed up outside of a small village in Turkey and there was a legend from King Midas. There was a wagon there and it was tied with a complicated knot. And the legend was whoever could untie this knot would become the ruler of huge parts of Europe. And Alexander was 21 years old and he did not use a knife. He did not cut anything. But he looked at

13:49 this knot that was tied to the wagon and he did one thing that no one before him had ever done. He realized that there was a pole in the center of it that it was tied around and he removed the pole and then he could see by looking very carefully how the whole knot was held together and he could untie it with no trouble whatsoever. And then he became Alexander the Great because the secret the simple secret was we are stuck because we can't see what's holding us there. If what's holding us there we cannot change like gravity is holding us to earth. Gravity is not a problem. Gravity is a situation. Going

14:35 to the moon doesn't deny gravity. It works with the fact that it exists. But we are working with problems, but we're confused because we want two things. So, can I show you what I mean? >> Yeah. >> Okay. So, here's an actual carrot and here is actual water. This is not actually a dunkey, but let's pretend this is a dunkey. Okay. In Burden's philosophy experiment from a couple hundred years ago, the dunkey is hungry and thirsty. He has complete freedom. He can move. And he's halfway between a pile of carrots and a bucket of water. And he's trapped because every time he moves toward the water, he's moving away

15:21 from the carrot. Can't do that cuz he's hungry. And every time he moves toward the carrot, he's moving away from the water. Can't do that because he's thirsty. And so in the experiment, because we're trapped, we end up dying of hunger and thirst. And all of us do this. And we do it with one simple word which is but. I want this but I also want that. Right? I want to have a creative life but I never want to get rejected. I want to run the marathon but I don't want to get tired. And we hide the butt. We don't say the butt out loud. So my favorite story which I talk about in the book is Jackson Pollock. So Jackson Pollock was the most famous painter in America in the 1940s about 80

16:09 years ago. He was on the cover of Life magazine. He had three years where he could do no wrong. His paintings were snapped up. Everyone saw him as a little bit of a hero. It's very unusual for an artist to be a hero in their own lifetime. And his wife Lee Kraner later said that he felt like he had done everything he could do with this cycle of art. And what most people in that situation would have done is become a Jackson Pollock cover band. Paint more versions of his old paintings. Take the money. You've won. He wanted to be a brilliant creator. He wanted to be on the frontier. So he stopped painting Jackson Pollock paintings. He went to a studio and came up with a whole new style. Different size canvas, different

16:55 approach. It didn't look like Jackson Pollock had done it. and he brought it to this big show and the world yawned. Not one piece sold. And to this day, if you go to a museum, you will probably not see a second cycle Jackson Pollock. This led him to become even more of a substance abuser, which led to him dying in a tragic car crash that killed somebody else as well. Because Jackson Pollock wanted two things. He wanted to live on the frontier and be the creative artist on the cutting edge, but he also wanted to be the celebrity who could sell everything he made and was seen as a genius. He forgot how many years it took the first Jackson Pollock to accomplish that. And because the second Jackson Pollock didn't hit, the butt

17:43 became really loud in his head. You can't have two of these things if they are diametrically opposed. We need to find where is the butt. I want this butt. I want that. It's usually hiding as an and but once we see it, once we say, "Oh, that is what is keeping me from giving the people I'm trying to serve what they need. That's why I'm not getting where I need to go." We can remove the pole, see the entanglements, see what we're measuring wrong, forgive them, make a new decision, and the problem goes away. >> And you can substitute and, you're saying, instead of but. The and is the thing that emphasizes it. I want to be a creative person and I'm eager to be rejected and not people have people get

18:28 the joke for a while and have to live in the back of my van because that's what creative people do. That's part of it. I get that. I want to be popular on social media. And that means I can't be honest and authentic and consistent because I got to keep chasing X, Y, or Z. And when we look at the people who consistently get big clicks, that's what they're doing. They're not saying, "This is who I am." They're going to chase the next thing. If you're not happy with that, please don't do it. But the and amplifies the work, but undercuts it. There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you're already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button? It helps the show more than you

19:14 know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. There's people listening right now that are maybe they got three kids under the age of seven. I'm thinking about my brother. He's got three kids under the age of seven. >> And they also want to launch a company, >> right? And they they might feel that there's a tension between those two things because they on one hand want to be the best dad on earth like my brother wants to be but at the same time they really want to launch that AI startup. >> Yeah. >> Now these two things are tugging at each other. >> Correct. >> What do they do? >> Well, the first thing they did was really important. They named it. >> Okay. >> Okay. Second thing can't do two things at the same time, but you can do many things over time. And what that means is he made a

20:01 commitment to three small humans in this moment. He's going to go to work, but he can't go to work for 100 hours a week. So he needs to pick a project where the amount of time he has is enough time to do the project really well. He cannot start an open AI competitor. It is off the table. That is impossible because the thing he's committed to cannot coexist with that. >> That's hard to admit, >> right? But it unlocks the door to what we can do. If he can figure out how to build an entity where he's not hiding, where he's actually showing up on the hook to a group of people and say, "I know more about AI than you, and I'm going to use this tool to do X, and they pay him for it." Now, at the end of a 40-hour week, he

20:47 appropriately goes and does the work of a dad, right? That's a business that's creating value for people that will make you more profit than OpenAI made last year, right? So the point I'm making is media keeps showing up and saying what you're supposed to do is be a Kardashian. What you're supposed to do is be Sam Alman. No, that's not what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to make promises and keep them for the smallest audience. That's enough. You can't maximize two things that use the same space. Do you think it's possible to know if a motivation or a goal or a dream you have or an ambition you have is real or not? And when I say real, I mean like did I just inherit this from expectations from Instagram or from my

21:33 family or because my brother-in-law is rich and I want to kind of compete. Is there a way to know if my my the goal I say I want is a real one? >> Yeah, I love this. This is brilliant. This gets back to the idea of purpose. What is the change you seek to make with the next cycle of your effort? Not your purpose on earth, but the purpose of the work you're about to do. Are you trying to make Mark Zuckerberg happy? Are you trying to make an anonymous commenter happy? Are you trying to teach troll a lesson? Because when you say that out loud, you realize that's a ridiculous purpose and a trap. >> If [clears throat] we can be clear, what's in it for me? If I put this time in, what will I get in return? So my company has 75 people, let's say, and should I grow to have 250 people?

22:19 Well, what would be in it for me to be a CEO of 250 people instead of 75 people? >> You're going to have a bigger headache. You're going to have more money theoretically. >> Theoretically, but what you're really going to earn is a different kind of status. You have to decide if that status boss of more people that status what I get to say at the cocktail party that status of what could happen after that is worth the price you're going to pay to do this or not. And so we keep making these choices about what is the purpose of this work. And that leads to the key from Steve Presfield which is resistance. And resistance is any feeling we have that keeps us from doing generous generative creative work of any

23:05 kind. So for example, writer's block is resistance. For example, you're going out on a date and you change your outfit six times. Resistance shows up in so many of the things we do. And the systems around us indoctrinate us because they want us to be cogs in the system. They want us to say, "Well, how do I get an A? How do I get permission to do X, Y, or Z? I'm not going to initiate anything. So, it's easier for your brother to deal with the resistance in his head by saying, "I'm stuck." than it is for him to say, "I changed the lives of 17 people this weekend." Whereas, if we kept drilling into what's your purpose, I think he would say, "Yeah, changing the lives of people is more important to me than making Business Week magazine

23:51 happy because I built some company." Is it useful to try and name the resistance in order to overcome it? >> You can't make resistance go away ever. You can dance with it. You can invite it in for tea. You can name it. You can say the reason I'm hesitating to do this is resistance. You can say, "I don't feel like it. I got to go do this other thing instead. I don't want to host a small party." Resistance. My friend Lisa moved across the country to be with her partner all the way to Los Angeles. knew three people in the whole city. She says, "I don't want to live a lonely life in Los Angeles. I'm going to have a potluck dinner every Friday. I'm going to start by inviting the three people I know. And every week, you can come back if you bring a new person.

24:37 50 weeks later, she has a network of 400 people, all good friends." Anyone could have done that. No one does. Resistance. What if I invite someone and they say no? What if I invite someone I don't like them? What if I invite someone and they don't like me? Resistance, resistance, resistance. Name the baggage. Drop the baggage. Do it. Once you can name the baggage, you can say this is why I am feeling stuck. If I can let go of this other thing, I can move toward the carrot because I can forgive the water. I was sort of running through different people in my head that I'm that I know. Again, trying to think about the personas of the people listening. And one of the things I realized is that everybody's starting from a very different place here, >> right? >> And why is that? Why is it that some people are quite good at dealing with resistance? They can invite around

25:22 strangers and then other people are living in fear. They're almost Yeah. They never take a risk. >> Yeah. Well, a big part of it is privilege. It's injustice. It's living in a culture that never gives you the benefit of the doubt. But even if I look among a group of people who all have the same amount of privilege, there's still somebody who is at the marketplace helping strangers find where they're going. There's still somebody who, you know, I have a family friend went to an Ivy League school. He wanted to be an actor and he went to apply to the improv troop for auditions and they picked 10 people and he came in 11th and he called me up. He was very upset and I said, "Why don't you start your own improv troop? You don't need any equipment. You don't need a permit. You just need four

26:10 people to do improv with. Start your own improv troop." And the irony, the reason I remember the story is he couldn't do it. I mean, isn't that what improv is? Start your own improv troop. And so, you know, I run a online community called Purple.space. And on Purple, we got thousands of people who are coaching each other. And it's the opposite of a social network. There's no scams. There's no hustle. Nobody sells anything to anybody else. It's just I'll talk you through my not you talk me through yours. Let's hold each other accountable. Well, someone needs to go first. Everyone wants to be invited to an engagement like that, but few people want to start one because you're afraid of being rejected because it's one step short of

26:55 dying. So, when we can name this and realize it's actually not at all related to dying, this isn't about hustling someone and getting in their face to sell them something. This is about offering to solve their problem as you solve your problem by naming the thing and figuring out where we can be of value. >> One of the things that I've experienced as a podcaster is a lot of people come up to me in the street and they'll tell me about the podcast idea that they've had for four years. [laughter] >> And I it's quite a curious thing to observe because it appears on the surface that they are serious, but the very nature that they've been mulling it for a couple of years means that there's probably some kind of resistance there. >> Correct. Exactly. So I for a couple years my friend uh Alex Depal and I ran the podcasting fellowship. So thousands

27:40 of people went through this workshop to start a podcast and the reason podcasts are such a great example is everyone knows what a podcast is and the cost of starting a podcast is less than a dollar. So why don't you have one, right? Okay. Well, so we start the cycle by give me all the reasons you can't have a podcast. And one of the ones that comes up is well I don't think I could get good guests. M >> and then we would say, "Okay, who would be the best guest you could ever get?" And amazingly, Michelle Obama's name comes up. Michelle Obama is not going to be on your podcast, [laughter] but who would you need to have on your podcast as the guest before Michelle Obama that would lead her more likely to say yes? And who would be the guest before that and the guest before that? And let's go all the way back to your

28:26 next door neighbor. Can you get your next door neighbor to be a guest on your podcast? Yes. So go make that podcast and just play it for the 20 people who are in this circle. And at that point, half the people can't do it. There's no technical reason why. It's just too hard to say to your next door neighbor, can I interview you for 20 minutes? And then show it to somebody else because resistance. And so the hack I give people is start a blog under another name, under an assumed name. No one will know you wrote it. Do it for 100 days in a row. If you do that for 100 days in a row, I'm betting you're going to want to put your real name on it. But if not, at least you understand there was nothing fatal about posting something in public for 100 days in a row with somebody else's name on it. So that's obviously not

29:12 where the writer's block is. It's in resistance. Two things at once. I want to do this. I want to be recognized, but I don't want it to fail. I don't want to be disrespected. I don't want to lose status. And those two things keep us paralyzed. And the system likes it like that. >> What you did there is you took the resistance and you tried to break it down into the smallest possible piece. >> Correct. Yes. >> So you took a big piece of resistance which is how do I get Michelle Obama on my podcast. You broke it down into I need to go ask my next door neighbor to come on my podcast. >> Yeah. >> And then you broke it even smaller to I'm going to start an anonymous blog. >> Yeah. >> Cuz when we call our own bluff, it's very uncomfortable, but it's better than someone else calling her bluff. And this gets back to my posture of I can't solve your problem, but maybe I can give you

29:58 tools that can help you name your problem so that in a safe place you can talk to somebody about where is the resistance? Why am I in my head about this? What's the smallest unit of value for the smallest possible audience that I could do that would make a difference for them? Bob Leitz writes the most popular music blog in the world. Everybody in the music industry knows him. I promise you when he started he had five readers. My blog has a million readers. When I started I had five readers. That's the way they all start. That's how your podcast started. Five listeners. >> When you um you broke it down there and you turned it into an anonymous blog. What I I guess what you were also doing is you were breaking down the

30:43 embarrassment into smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller pieces of embarrassment, right? But like irrespective there was still embarrassment. And I heard this phrase embarrassment is the cost of entry. Would you agree with the the general idea that irrespective of what you do, you're going to have to be embarrassed. You're going to have to like pay that as the the fee of entry to almost anything outside of your current context and identity. >> All right. So let's talk about lifeguards and imposttor syndrome. So imposter syndrome was named by two social scientists about 70 years ago. Imposter syndrome is that feeling when you're doing something important or new that you're a little bit of a fake or a fraud and that someone else ought to be doing this instead of you. So, the story I tell is about being a lifeguard. So,

31:28 in Canada, you have to get your bronze medallion to be a lifeguard. And imagine you're on uh Canoe Lake on duty. There's six lifeguards on the dock and a kid starts drowning right in front of you. The first thing that might come to mind is I just barely got my bronze medallion and that guy two docks down is a much better swimmer than me. This is someone else should say it. And then you realize, no, no, it's right in front of you. This is your kid. You jump in the water. Do you apologize for your stroke? Do you say I'm really sorry I'm not getting there as fast? You save the kid. That's what lifeguards do. The kid is going to thank you and their parents are going to thank you. That's the work of a lifeguard. Lifeguards are able to overcome resistance because it's such a vivid thing. Well, if someone's going to

32:16 send an email newsletter to someone who asked for it and that might help them get to where they're going, where's the embarrassment exactly? And shame is this interesting emotion because we must receive it. It's sent to us all the time, but you have to receive it for it to work. Now, I'm walking on 74th Street, not far from here, past this little pocket playground, and I hear a four-year-old inside the playground taunting somebody else. And this kid is making fun of this guy, making fun of his clothes, making fun of the fact that he's bald. And then I realize the kid's taunting me because he was just, you know, it felt safe for him, and he was just yelling at bystanders. The point was, it instantly

33:02 brought me back to third grade. instantly brought me back to what does it feel like to be bullied? But I wait, first of all, you're on the other side of a fence. I'm never going to see you again. You cannot put any shame on me. It doesn't it bounces off of me. And when we can get to useful work for a small audience of people, we're allowed to say to someone who doesn't get the joke, "Sorry, it's not for you. I forgive you. I don't have to accept your shame. I don't have to accept the embarrassment you want to give me because I'm here for the right reason. And if it's not for you, we both learned something. >> I guess because of the internet as well. Embarrassment is everywhere and shame is everywhere. People are you start anything on the internet, there's going to be some troll that tells you it's terrible. Even when we started this podcast, I mean, still today we get a lot of people telling us it's

33:47 terrible. But >> um because it's everywhere, one could almost argue that um overcoming it is now a superpower because you know, everybody that does anything is going to encounter it. And you know how painful it is to deal with that and you also know that most people won't. That actually the skill of mastering like overcoming shame or embarrassment or critical feedback or whatever it might be might be one of the most important skills in the modern world today when there's so much negative feedback and so much shame or embarrassment or whatever. And just that's what you that's what I was thinking of when you're saying it's like how how do I get better at dealing with that? >> Well, let's look at it slightly differently because I think that's a great point. But practical empathy says, "I don't know what you know. I didn't have the day you had. I don't want what

34:33 you want." And that's okay. And I can forgive that and I don't have to take it personally. I can simply take it seriously. And those are different things. Here's an interesting semi- business example. You've been to Shake Shack? >> Yes. >> My friend Danny Meyer started Shake Shack. It's now a multi-billion dollar company. Shake Shack is based on his youth in St. Louis, Missouri. and he grew up with crinkle cut French fries. Crinkle cut French fries are the secret to a certain kind of fast food hamburger joint. And fancy New York restaurant critics, Ed Lavine, the New York Times said, "What are you doing? You're making this whole big deal out of everything is handmade and fresh. You're serving frozen crinkle cut French fries that we can buy in the freezer at the supermarket. You need to make real

35:20 French fries." So Danny, his status is associated with the fanciest restaurants in the United States. And he and his team see this assault they're getting on being embarrassed about the French fries which are at the heart of their menu. So they spend millions of dollars over the course of a year researching potatoes, reconfiguring every single restaurant, putting in a different kind of fryer, making fresh cut French fries is a really big challenge. Also, fresh cut French fries are a living thing, and in May, the potatoes are different than they are in November. So, sometimes a fresh cut French fry is the best French fry you ever had. And sometimes it's limp and not very good. And they switched to fresh cut French fries

36:05 because they wanted the status that came from New York cultural critics saying, "These are guys authentic. They're the real deal." And the French fries were no good. and the entire internet blew up and say, "What have you done to Shake Shack?" And the staff hated making them and it was a mess and you had to clean things differently. Nothing good came of this shift except making a couple people in New York City happy because that's who they decided to listen to. And one day, Danny looked at this and said, "What is the purpose of the French fries at Shake Shack? Do the French fries at Shake Shack exist to help a non-C customer feel good about eating at a Danny Meyer restaurant or do the French fries at Shake Shack exist to further the story of what it is to come to Shake Shack? And they ripped everything out

36:52 and they went back to the crinkle cut fries and the world rejoiced. profits went up, productivity went up, and they got back to what they were trying to do in the first place by forgiving and ignoring the people who needed to say, "You need fresh cut French fries." Because that's what they stood for. But it wasn't what the business was for. >> This sounds like a business story, but actually, as you were saying it, I realized that it pertains to everybody's life listening right now because we're all serving a certain voice, >> right? And then the other thing that came to mind is I've just hired someone called Arada Pema who came from Amazon. She was leading products there, building AI products at AWS. She's now leading, she's our CIT, chief innovation and technology officer at Steven.com, my holding company. And one of the things she told me about Amazon is that they

37:39 are just unbelievably obsessed in the customer. Every decision they make from a culture perspective is all about the customer. She even told me that Jeff Bezos in his meetings and still in the Amazon meetings today, they put an extra chair in every meeting that is empty to represent the customer because they want the customer to be in every meeting. And she told me how that anchors all of the decisions they make from a product perspective right back to the the person they're serving. I guess it kills the donkey thing you told me because they're not having to choose between serving the merchants or the customer. They are serving the customer. Sometimes she told me at the merchants's expense, but you have to be okay with that. >> That's what she said to me. And I actually really stayed with me cuz now I always think about like who's the customer, who's the C. Even when I do this podcast, you hear me talking about

38:25 personas. I'm talking about Dave the taxi driver and Jay, the mum. >> Exactly. >> That's who we're serving here. >> Yeah. And so I just need to put a small paper clip here. In the last two years, Amazon has lost their way about who they're serving. And Amazon made billions and billions of dollars last year selling ads that make Amazon search worse >> to people who want to interrupt what you're looking for to put their thing up on top. That doesn't serve the customer that serves a different kind of shareholder. But yes, the model of what Jeff built there from the way they hold their meetings, which is absolutely fascinating to what they chose to do about who it was for and who it wasn't for, were consistent about saying this is the problem we are here to solve. This is the purpose of this click. This is the purpose of this page. There's no

39:10 doubt about what it's for. And so the meeting thing, most people who are listening to this go to meetings. And many people who have white collar jobs say the meetings are the worst part of their day. What is the meeting for? The typical meeting, if we're going to be honest, is to make the boss feel like you are listening to them and let the boss take attendance because it could probably be a memo. And if you're not sending a memo and you're having a meeting, let's be clear. Who's this for? What's it for? What is the purpose of what we just did here with eight people just listening the whole time? Well, why didn't you just send them a video that they could watch at double speed? Meetings are a symptom. They're a symptom of whether the organization is entangled and stuck with unspoken rules about what we do around here.

39:57 And we can see them everywhere we look. When in doubt, there are three things that drive people. fear, belonging or affiliation and status and we don't really understand what they mean. So first fear I call it the freedom from fear which is different. Freedom from fear is I don't want to do things that are going to make me feel nervous. I don't want to do things that I think I'm afraid of. That keeps people from doing a lot of things. That's resistance. Affiliation is you don't wear a tuxedo to a funeral because or a clown suit. No one's going to do that, so you're not going to do that. Fitting in. Who's to my left? Who's to my right? What's everybody else doing? And the third one, which is really misunderstood, is

40:42 status. Status is simple. Who eats lunch first? When we get to the oasis, which animal gets the water first? Status isn't money, but it could be related to money. Status is just who's up and who's down. These three things keep dancing with each other about how people choose what kind of coat. or are they going to buy Patagonia or are they going to buy a cheaper knockoff? One of those things comes with a different kind of affiliation and status than another one. But if we can look for this, we can start to decode that quiet butt that's been going on in our head. Name it, right? I want to get this car. Why? Because it's fast. No, you don't need to go fast. I want to get this car because that kid at the high school lunch table who said I was never

41:28 going to amount to something, he could never afford this car. And every time I get in this car, I'm going to be able to tell myself a story that I'm not that kid from the lunch table anymore. That's why I want to get this car. Okay, now we're clear about what problem you're here to solve. Go for it. >> Really? >> Well, does it help you? Is that what you want to put your resources into? If that helps you, then it solved the problem. >> Do you think it is a worthy goal, a worthy reason? Well, it's not for me to decide this that high school leaves all sorts of tracks all over how we look at the world. My high school English teacher wrote in my yearbook, "You are the bane of my existence and you will never amount to anything." And she was partially inest, but remembering

42:14 that as I become a professional writer is fascinating. I dedicated like my ninth book to her and then I could let it go, right? And she and I had a wonderful lunch a couple years later. The point is we can't deny that these things are in our lives. None of us are living this optimized, fully optimized life. The reason you're going and taking those nutritional supplements, the reason you're listening to this thing about some shortcut of bio, whatever has nothing to do with you doing an actual analysis of all the best ways for you to be healthy. They have to do with feeling agency. They have to do with feeling a certain kind of affiliation with the crowd you're in. That's why we have cycles in medicine. It's not because

43:01 medicine goes in and out of actual science fashion. It's cuz culture changes what we think is beautiful. Changes what we think we need to do to get our emotional needs met. I've got 60 seconds and I'm going to show you how much I can get done because of our sponsor called Whisper Flow. And for those of you that don't know what it is, it's a business I invested in that turns your speech into text in any app or device. I'm going to post into our Slack channel which rewards whichever team member conducted the most experiments this week. Hi everyone. Here is this week's experimentter of the week. Congratulations to the Dire of SEO trailer team, which is Aunt, Liv, Dom, and Cam. You guys have one. Okay, now I'm going to open Gmail. So, here is one of our founders on an email chain that I

43:47 want to connect my team with. All I have to say is add my team's emails, and Whisper will do exactly that. Now, a quick message to Juan, who does my schedule every single week. Hey, Juan, can I record on Wednesday at 2? Actually, no. Do you know what? Let's record at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Whisper Flow is four times faster than typing, and it is incredibly easy to use. So, if you want to give it a go, all you have to do is head to whisperflow.ai/stephven to download it today. I've spent the last decade building and investing in companies. And so often the conversation around marketing budgets follows the exact same pattern. The budget gets approved, but then the results don't come back. And most of the time, the creative pitch and the offer is fine. The problem lies with the audience. Ads reach people who will never buy or

44:33 refer, nor do they have the power to sign off anything at all. And this is why so much budget gets wasted. LinkedIn Ads, who are sponsor of this podcast, lets you reach them specifically by job title, seniority, company size, industry, the skills that they have, and much more. You're no longer hoping your ad reaches the right person. Instead, you're defining exactly who sees it. And LinkedIn Ads drives the highest B2B return on ad spend across all major ad networks. Give them a try at linkedin.com/diary. And if you spend $250 on your first campaign, you'll get a $250 credit for your next one just by going to linkedin.com/diary. Keep this to yourself. Terms and conditions apply. I think I asked this as well because yes, you can serve my

45:18 parents expectations because they're immigrants and they want me to be doctor, lawyer, scientist, whatever. Or I could serve my kids who want me to be a great dad. Or I could serve my playground trauma who wants to get the kid back who said I was never going to be anything. >> Exactly. >> Are any of these voices more worthy than the other? Is there a particular voice we should really orientate ourselves around? And the other thing I've really now sort of internalized is I'm going to have to say no to the other voices. Yeah. >> I can't transerve them all or else I'll be the donkey stuck in the middle of the water and the carrot. >> I love this. I wish I put this in the book. This is exactly correct that we're going to have to forgive some of these voices. So there are three basic things that get us hung up. There are time entanglements which is today is not yesterday and today is not tomorrow.

46:04 Today is right now. There are social community entanglements. What will this person think of me? What will that person think of me? And then there are the entanglements we have with our vision of ourselves. when I look in the mirror, if this works, what will I think of myself? If this doesn't work, what will I think of myself? And all three of them get in the way of announcing a purpose and then going to solve that problem because we say to ourselves, well, I want to work to help the poor, but I can't get a job at a really fancy nonprofit. And if I get a job at a less fancy nonprofit, then what will my parents think? Oh, all of that's going on. We have to acknowledge that, right? We say, "I went to law school for three years. I didn't like it. I practiced law

46:50 for five years. I hated it. Do I want to spend the next 40 years of my life being a lawyer? Because I've tried it fully out." We can't quit because then we would have to explain to our former self, why did they pay this big price to get me this fancy gift and I'm ignoring it? Sunk costs keep us trapped. And what we can do is realize that's a gift from our former self. And like all gifts, you don't have to accept it. If someone shows up and offers you a Vietnamese pot belly pig to take care of, you can say, "No, thank you. I don't want to accept your gift." That law degree is a gift. But you don't have to accept it now. Now that you know what you know, you can make a different decision about the purpose of your work. And if it's not helping you achieve the purpose of your

47:36 work, you can forgive it, say, "Thank you very much and untie the knot." I think that point around sunk cost is an important one to really um double click on because when I learned about the idea of sunk cost, it completely changed me as an investor. >> It was actually my brother my brother's been working in like investment banking for like 15 years now works in my company. And he explained to me one day early in my career. He goes, "Stephen, it was a a stock I had. I was an investor in a particular stock and the stock was doing terribly. The company was doing terribly, but I didn't want to sell it." >> Right. >> Because I had invested at a higher price. >> Correct. And then he sent me the psychology of money book and a few other papers and said this is what sunk cost bias is and it'll ruin your life if you don't realize what it is. >> Yeah. And it's in everything we do. So there's the new parking apps let you

48:22 find a parking garage near where you're going and pay in advance. >> So when I come into the city sometimes I'll do this. So I've got a $35 ticket to go park at this lot starting in five minutes. I'm driving in and I pass a free space on the street. Should I take it? So, the advantage of the free space, of course, is you can leave when you want to leave and you don't have to engage and it does it saves you five or 10 minutes. But if I take the free space, I'm wasting the money I just paid for that parking garage and it still goes off in my head that well, yeah, obviously you take the free space because the money you paid is already gone. >> That's a that ticket is a gift from your former self. Knowing what you know now,

49:08 would you take this job? Knowing what you would know now, would you take this parking space? And if the answer is yes, then you can forgive what got you here because serving the old you, the old you's gone. >> D, I was thinking about relationships as well. >> Yeah. Now, if you're the kind of person that leaves a relationship every 3 weeks because you're ignoring some cost, then you're never going to have a relationship. repeating the process has costs to you because it develops these patterns. That's not the kind of sunk cost I'm talking about. But yes, when you meet somebody who has decided to end a relationship, the healthy thing for them to do is to say that relationship was then I made

49:54 all the right decisions based on who I was then, based on who they were then. But we are not those people anymore. So based on who we are now, do we want to recommmit to this, will it pay off in the future? And if the answer is no, it will not pay off in the future, you've already answered the question. It reminds me of Daniel Coleman's work on loss aversion. >> Mhm. >> And I think this is an important thing to explain because when you realize what's actually going on in your head and why people don't like to lose things, you can spot it when it's happening to you. >> Right? >> I read this study that showed if you lose £10 in the street, falls out my pocket. If I then fi find 10 pounds, it doesn't make up for the 10 pounds I just lost. I'd have to find 20 pounds to feel um the pleasure sufficient to the pain that I experienced from losing the 10.

50:40 >> Humans don't like to lose things. And when I I I remember searching what's like the evolutionary reason for this and it it came to say that once upon a time in our evolutionary past again this is a hypothesis when we had a meal in front of us going in pursuit of another meal that would risk the one we current have was a terrible decision to make. >> So actually this whole you know we're designed to be sufficiently satisfied with what we have versus the pursuit of surplus. >> Yeah. >> So we want to protect what we currently have. That was a survival um advantage. >> No, absolutely. And we don't have to look in evolution. We look at wild animals today. Wild animals are wild. They hate change. Change never helped a species move forward because it represents a threat. And what we built

51:28 as humans is a culture where change is happening faster and faster and faster. By the time we're done with this conversation, some AI company will have launched a new frontier model. Boom. And we can look at this and say, "Where can I go hide? How can I get back to being a wild animal that's in in this one place where nothing changes?" Or we can decide to get back to the purpose of what are we trying to do right now. Ignore the stuff that's not relevant to it. Seek out the stuff that helps us make the change we seek to make and get back to work. So, we need to decide where we're going to put our attention because our attention is something we can never get back. >> You talked as well about systems, the systems we're like held in place with.

52:13 One of the things that I've seen in your work is this idea of picking yourself because I guess we're wired to to believe that there are still gatekeepers, but those gatekeepers have increasingly vanished. I mean, the fact that I can start this podcast and people listen, I think is evidence of the fact that you no longer need gatekeepers. Do you know a funny story that I've never told is [laughter] I um I went for an interview with LBC, which is a UK radio station before I took this podcast seriously. I went there, I did my 2-hour audition, sat there in the chair, people pretended to phone in. It was just staff LBC, >> right? >> And um I left. I was like quite nervous, etc. I thought I did a good job, but I was a little bit nervous, unsure about what they might say. And I never heard back. They never gave me feedback. They never told me if I was good or if I was

52:58 bad. So, I started this podcast um on YouTube in my kitchen [laughter] because I never heard back from LBC. And it just goes to show actually you don't need >> massive company to give you permission to start a platform. You can just do things in this modern world. And this is kind of dubtales into your idea of picking yourself. >> Yeah. So, let's talk about systems first and then we'll come back to picking yourself. >> Okay. >> People get a little glassy when you talk about systems. So, let me try to make it really simple. When you get in a car here, you drive on the right side of the road. When you get back to the UK, you drive on the left side of the road. Why? Because it's way more efficient to drive on the same side of the road as everybody else. We have a system that says if you're going to drive in the United States, drive on the right side of the road. Systems start to get a little bit more complicated. The college industrial complex is a system

53:45 that starts in first grade that includes things like the SATs and the stickers and the football teams and the dorms. And it's a 400-year-old system that we got into because it works. It works for most people most of the time. It's an easy way to look at a resume, see one word, and decide if you want to interview somebody or not. So, the system that people my age grew up in is you would do as well as you could in high school, and a college would pick you. And then you do as well as you could in college, and then a company would pick you. and you would do as well as you could at the company and then they would pick you and you get a promotion and then you would die. And so we indoctrinated billions of people around the world. Please wait to get picked. Here are all the rules and if you follow all the rules you might get

54:31 picked. Turns out it was rigged. Some people got picked unfairly. But that's what we got brainwashed. And we still teach our kids this. >> And then all of a sudden starting, you know, in the 90s we said, "Here's a microphone. Here's a video camera. Here's a typewriter. Pick yourself. And now it's extended to here's an AI. You can start a company by tomorrow. You could build a complicated website by Friday. Wait, I'm waiting for someone to tell me I should go do that. No one's going to call. It's $20 a month. You can probably get it for free at your library. What are you going to do? And when we put ourselves on the hook, it's super scary because does that mean I'm responsible for every kid on Canoe Lake who needs a

55:16 lifeguard and I'm responsible for every kid who might suffer from river blindness and I'm responsible for this? I'm responsible for nobody. I'm a victim. But we have the chance to say, I pick myself to solve this problem. I'm on the hook to help these people. I'm going to use whatever tools I can to pick myself to make a thing better. Turns out that's generative. If you get a little good at it, lots of people will ask you to do it again. When you give away credit and take responsibility, lots of people will ask you to do it again. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we're waiting to be picked because it's a nice excuse for resistance. >> Mhm. >> We live in a permission seeking state

56:02 because it's a good shield. >> Yeah. to avoid this thing you were talking about which is the freedom from fear. >> Yeah. I mean the entire New York City book publishing industry is based on the author gets to say well they picked me to write the book and then I got to go promote the book because I promised I would promote the book. The the book isn't there because I wanted the book to be there. They asked me to write this book. And as soon as you can publish your own book, as soon as you can start your own YouTube channel, you don't get to you don't get to say great news YouTube call. They want me to start putting things on YouTube. And that's why the number of people you would think would go ahead and use this tool isn't as big as it could be because again,

56:48 it's one thing to ask a teenager to be on Tik Tok. They're just entertaining themselves. They don't see themselves as a Tik Tocker. >> To see yourself as somebody I picked myself. I am saying this and I'm responsible. That's hard. No one taught us to do that. It's kind of like the LBC thing. I was waiting for LBC to pick me. And >> I think once this podcast comes out, they're going to call you and you got a big decision to make cuz it's steady, Stephen. [laughter] They they they'll give you like health insurance, the whole thing. >> I still love LBC, by the way. I still watch LBC. So, but um I'm probably too busy now to do LBC. One of the the the sort of adjacent points here is how do I know if I'm delusional? >> Right? I I always think this because a lot of the advice we give people around

57:35 like getting going and starting and pursuing the thing they want to pursue doesn't necessarily always come with the nuance that actually like I can't actually be an NBA player. >> Correct. >> But h how do I know because all the advice is just go for it, pick yourself, etc. But >> yeah, that's not my >> have the talent. >> I'm so glad you brought this up. That's not my advice. You probably are delusional if you're picking something that's super fun that involves skipping lots of intermediate steps and it ends with a happy ending where you're famous. The chances of winning that lottery are very very low. So people come to me and say, "I got this great book. Will you help me get a career as a novelist?" And the answer is super easy. Take your novel. It was really hard for you to write. I get that. Make it into a nicely formatted PDF. Cost you nothing. email

58:21 it to 20 people. If they send it to other people and it spreads, someone's going to call you and hire you to write your next novel. If it doesn't spread, write a better novel. But don't start running around saying, "I'm a novelist and I deserve to get picked and have a big advance." The heartbreak of someone who is delusional is they insist that the world owes them because they worked so hard on X, Y, or Z or that they have found some secret transcript that if anyone else understood it, everyone would real. Well, if people don't understand it, that's on you. So, we can get past the delusion by going for the smallest viable audience. What's the smallest group of people that if I made a difference for them, it would be enough.

59:09 What's interesting is I imagine if you said that to some people, they would really not like the answer. >> People hate it when I say this. >> Why? >> Because it's so comfortable to be stuck in that knot. I'm a genius and I'm really hardworking, but no one in the world understands me. So now my butt isn't the problem because I don't have to worry about any of the things that come with the responsibility of it being in front of the wrong people or whatever. It's so much easier to say, "If only and I, you know, I need to be

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