Speaker 1: We're actually doing something a little different today. We're bringing
Speaker 1: you a new podcast that we think you'll love. A
Speaker 1: Kimbo is a podcast from Seth Godin, an entrepreneur, blogger,
Speaker 1: and best selling author. At Kimbo, which is the word
Speaker 1: I love is a show about culture and how we
Speaker 1: can change it. Here's how one avid listener describes it.
Speaker 1: He said, reading and listening to Seth has made such
Speaker 1: a difference in my everyday life and work. I see
Speaker 1: the world more accurately. I'm equipped to make better decisions
Speaker 1: and enjoy what I do much more as a result
Speaker 1: of listening to this podcast. We hope you guys feel
Speaker 1: the same way. And so here's a Kimbo, a podcast
Speaker 1: from Seth Godin, a new podcast. Cool. Who's the first guest?
Speaker 1: What are you gonna call it? No? Guests? What does
Speaker 1: a kimbo mean? That's never gonna work. Hey, it's Seth
Speaker 1: and this is a Kimbo. And now a word from
Speaker 1: Zip Recruiter are presenting sponsor. What do eyebrows have to
Speaker 1: do with making the right decision? A whole lot? Actually? Hey, there,
Speaker 1: I'm Ian Siegel and I'm the CEO and co founder
Speaker 1: of zip Recruiter. The smartest way to hire. Being an
Speaker 1: entrepreneur and owning a business has been a dream of
Speaker 1: mine since I was a kid, and I've learned a
Speaker 1: lot of interesting things while turning that dream into a reality,
Speaker 1: like how to tell if your big idea is really
Speaker 1: a big idea. Hint, it involves eyebrows. More on that
Speaker 1: later in the show. I found a zipp recruiter because
Speaker 1: I knew there was a smarter way for businesses to
Speaker 1: find talent. Today, companies of all sizes and industries use
Speaker 1: zip recruiter to fill their hiring needs. And if you're
Speaker 1: hiring now, you can try zip recruiter for free at
Speaker 1: zip recruiter dot com. Slash seth of employers who post
Speaker 1: on zip recruiter get a quality candidate through the site
Speaker 1: and just one day. So try it for free at
Speaker 1: zip recruiter dot com slash seth. See you later in
Speaker 1: the show. The Lions have a wonderful phrase salto mortale,
Speaker 1: the dangerous leap, the leap into the void. That fear
Speaker 1: we get in the pit of our stomach just before
Speaker 1: we commit, that fear that it's not going to work out.
Speaker 1: It's too soon, I'm not ready, And so we wait,
Speaker 1: but some people some people don't wait. Carl Benz, when
Speaker 1: he launched the car, did it in Germany where it
Speaker 1: was against the law to drive a car and there
Speaker 1: were no passable roads and there were no gas stations.
Speaker 1: He should have waited. Guttenberg, pioneer of movable type, launched
Speaker 1: the book when there were no bookstores and when no
Speaker 1: one knew how to read, and when reading glasses were
Speaker 1: required but hadn't been invented yet. He should have waited. Internally,
Speaker 1: there's constant pressure to hesitate, to hold back, not to launch,
Speaker 1: to find flaws, to give ourselves one more chance. But
Speaker 1: recently we made it worse. We made it worse because
Speaker 1: in all capital letters we added launch big, that you
Speaker 1: need a grand opening, that if you can't have a
Speaker 1: home run, you shouldn't even try. I blame it on
Speaker 1: Gill again, on The Brady Bunch and on the Beverly Hillbillies.
Speaker 1: It goes all the way from there to the Odd Couple,
Speaker 1: all the sitcoms we grew up with the Flintstones, which
Speaker 1: are sort of like the Honeymooners, but in prehistoric times.
Speaker 1: The Brady Bunch. Here's the story of a lovely lady
Speaker 1: all these shows had a lot in common. One of
Speaker 1: them was this. The first forty five to sixty seconds
Speaker 1: was a theme song that explained in detail the entire
Speaker 1: storyline of the show. Even though the show after commercials
Speaker 1: was only twenty four minutes long, the network insisted that
Speaker 1: they spend a minute to catch everybody up. That makes
Speaker 1: no sense. Why would you do that? So it's a mystery?
Speaker 1: Then why invest so much of this precious time in
Speaker 1: repeating a long theme song to make sure that no
Speaker 1: one was confused? Well, it's not that much of a
Speaker 1: mystery if you understand that before the internet and cable
Speaker 1: there were only three t V channels. Half the country
Speaker 1: was watching three channels, and if people switched from one
Speaker 1: to the other, you'd lose them maybe forever the show
Speaker 1: was live. That was it, once and done, And so
Speaker 1: you got conservative because you needed the grand opening, the
Speaker 1: big wind every time. Where did this idea come from?
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't line up with the way that civilization
Speaker 1: evolved for a really long time. If you bought some thing,
Speaker 1: you were buying it from someone that you already knew.
Speaker 1: The people in the village were the people in the village,
Speaker 1: the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. They didn't need
Speaker 1: a hype man and advanced man. They didn't need somebody
Speaker 1: pushing for the big grand opening. They were there yesterday
Speaker 1: and they were going to be there tomorrow. I think
Speaker 1: it's worth understanding it came from the carnival, from the
Speaker 1: traveling salesman, from the medicine man, from the people going
Speaker 1: village to village. They'd send their hype man up front,
Speaker 1: their advanced man. They knew they only had one day,
Speaker 1: two days, four days to make the sale, and then
Speaker 1: they were leaving town again. If you blew it it
Speaker 1: was live, you weren't going to get another chance. And
Speaker 1: so the grand opening, and so the need to pigeonhole yourself,
Speaker 1: the need to get it right the first time, to
Speaker 1: go big or to stay home. The carnys, the guys
Speaker 1: in the carnival called it a valley. The valley was
Speaker 1: the stick, the theme song, the thing you'd say over
Speaker 1: and over again to make sure that every single time
Speaker 1: you're interactive with somebody you could make the sale. Here's
Speaker 1: one from a bunch of years ago, trying to get
Speaker 1: people to go in and see the Piranhas. Get your
Speaker 1: tickets and come in killers of the Amazon, can devour
Speaker 1: a cow in a matter of seconds, can leave nothing
Speaker 1: but the bare bones. First time shown in your city,
Speaker 1: and you may never have the chance to see it again, alive, alive, alive.
Speaker 1: As you can see, the goal isn't to edify, to educate,
Speaker 1: to create an environment that you're gonna come back again
Speaker 1: and again. The goal is to take your money and
Speaker 1: then leave town. And this idea that we've got to
Speaker 1: be in a hurry spread from that to the mass
Speaker 1: marketing of TV to the movies. It used to be
Speaker 1: that a movie could run for three months, six months,
Speaker 1: nine months in the theaters before it went away, usually forever.
Speaker 1: But then TV came along and TV advertising, and what
Speaker 1: the movie studio has figured out was that they had
Speaker 1: a chance using TV to have really big opening weekends,
Speaker 1: and so they spent a fortune on Thursday nights advertising
Speaker 1: movies so that people would see him on the weekend.
Speaker 1: What they discovered was that giving away all the attractions
Speaker 1: in the TV ad and more important, making a movie
Speaker 1: that lent itself to TV advertising didn't lead to movies
Speaker 1: that we're going to play in the theaters for months,
Speaker 1: three days, ten days, twenty days gone and so the
Speaker 1: same thing happened that happened to TV. We need to
Speaker 1: hype it, we need to promo it. We don't have
Speaker 1: very much time. We want to reach the largest number
Speaker 1: of people. Let's fast for or just a little bit
Speaker 1: more to kickstarter, which I think should be called kick finisher.
Speaker 1: The reason it ought to be called kick finisher is
Speaker 1: that in order to make a kickstarter succeed, except for
Speaker 1: the obvious edge cases, the random one in ten thousand,
Speaker 1: to get lucky, someone how to get lucky, in order
Speaker 1: to have a kickstarter succeed, you need to begin with
Speaker 1: a following. You need to begin with people who trust you.
Speaker 1: A kickstarter is the end of a multi month or
Speaker 1: multi year effort to earn trust and attention. It's not
Speaker 1: a grand opening, it's a grand ending that what you
Speaker 1: get to do when you make a successful kickstarter is
Speaker 1: go to people, the edge cases, the loyal ones, the
Speaker 1: true fans. Go to those people and say I'm ready
Speaker 1: for you. Now we're doing a kickstarter. Those kickstarters always
Speaker 1: work if you have a sufficient follow before you begin,
Speaker 1: they always work. So it's not a lottery. It's not
Speaker 1: a chance to grab a brass ring. That a is
Speaker 1: Kevin Kelly has pointed out one thousand true fans is
Speaker 1: sufficient to make it as creative person one people who
Speaker 1: will listen to you, who will pay you, who will
Speaker 1: show up, who care about you, who would miss you
Speaker 1: if you are gone? Only a thousand. So let's compare
Speaker 1: that to the grand opening, thinking of I need ten
Speaker 1: million people to watch this TV show or doesn't work.
Speaker 1: That's a ten thousand x difference. You don't need to
Speaker 1: play that game. You can play your game. And your
Speaker 1: game is slow and steady, daring, risky, thrilling, but slow
Speaker 1: and steady because the goal isn't to hype your way
Speaker 1: with an advance man using a bally day after day
Speaker 1: to get one more rube to give you a dollar
Speaker 1: to see your piranha. Now you're playing a different game.
Speaker 1: And game we're playing doesn't need a grand opening. It
Speaker 1: he's grand finishing. There must be an alternative. How did
Speaker 1: Wikipedia grow without a grand opening? What about Harry Potter
Speaker 1: or The Martian? What about fifty Shades of Gray or
Speaker 1: Microsoft or Kiva or the Union Square Cafe. The list
Speaker 1: goes on and on. Most of the brands, most of
Speaker 1: the organizations that we care about, they didn't have a
Speaker 1: grand opening. They didn't have a hype man, they didn't
Speaker 1: launch with a bang. There must be another way. The
Speaker 1: alternative is called first ten. Everyone knows ten people. Everyone
Speaker 1: has ten people who will listen to them. Tell ten
Speaker 1: people see what happens. If those people tell others, the
Speaker 1: word will spread. If they don't make better work, take
Speaker 1: your novel, send it to forty people. Forty people who
Speaker 1: trust you and like you, see what happens. Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: share it. If they share, it will spread. If it spreads,
Speaker 1: it'll reach more people. Sooner or later, someone will reach
Speaker 1: out to you and ask you to write something else.
Speaker 1: First ten, ten, by ten, by ten, you put an
Speaker 1: idea in the world, not to everyone in the world,
Speaker 1: just the people who want to hear it, and then
Speaker 1: maybe it spreads, and if it spreads, it grows, and
Speaker 1: if it grows, you get to do it again. Almost
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, I was at a conference. There were
Speaker 1: some cool people there and we were going around the
Speaker 1: circle introducing each other, and the guy says, yeah, my
Speaker 1: name is Sergey and I have this little search engine
Speaker 1: called Google. And at the time a lot of people
Speaker 1: knew about Google, but it wasn't the worldwide phenomenon we
Speaker 1: know today. And then he said something profound. He said,
Speaker 1: we don't do any outbound marketing promotion or hype. And
Speaker 1: let me tell you why. We figure that one day
Speaker 1: everyone will use Google. And we also know that every
Speaker 1: day Google gets better. And since we're getting better every day,
Speaker 1: we're in no hurry to have people use it for
Speaker 1: the first time, because tomorrow or the day after that
Speaker 1: is soon enough, because it'll be better, they'll have a
Speaker 1: better first impression. We're in no hurry. Instead, we're going
Speaker 1: to make the best thing that we know how to
Speaker 1: make and wait for people to tell others. But it's
Speaker 1: not just digital stuff. There was a little tiny restaurant
Speaker 1: in the East Village of Manhattan years ago called Momofuko.
Speaker 1: No one had ever heard of it. You could walk
Speaker 1: in any time. This guy named David Chang, sort of crazy,
Speaker 1: had a little counter and a bunch of tables, and
Speaker 1: my family and I used to go there sometimes for
Speaker 1: lunch on a weekend. And there are all these rules.
Speaker 1: You couldn't leave this out. No subtractions, no additions, and
Speaker 1: eat what you eat. That's all you get. But what
Speaker 1: happened day by day is the word spread. It got
Speaker 1: to the point, as Yogi Barras said, where no one
Speaker 1: goes there because it's so crowded, and it turned into
Speaker 1: an entire empire. Or consider the amazing podcast Invisible from
Speaker 1: Roman Mars. How did you hear about it? Did you
Speaker 1: hear about it from those Super Bowl ads they ran?
Speaker 1: Of course not. There were dozens and dozens of episodes
Speaker 1: of Invisible before you heard about it, because Roman took
Speaker 1: the same approach. How do I make something for a few,
Speaker 1: something special, something it's really hard to pigeonhole something new.
Speaker 1: Or consider a piece of software like Dropbox. I don't
Speaker 1: recall ever seeing an ad for Dropbox until just recently. Instead,
Speaker 1: what Dropbox did was build a service that was important
Speaker 1: to share, not just to talk about it, but to
Speaker 1: use it with other people. Or my friend Jill Greenberg,
Speaker 1: one of the most talented and well known photographers in
Speaker 1: the world. How did Jill get there? She didn't get
Speaker 1: there by being picked by somebody to push her to
Speaker 1: the masses. She got there by making quirky art, by saying,
Speaker 1: I don't shoot pictures like everybody else, I shoot pictures
Speaker 1: like me, and so her photographs are distinctive. They don't
Speaker 1: fit in early on, lots and lots of people didn't
Speaker 1: buy the photographs she wanted to sell to them, the magazines,
Speaker 1: the commercial shoots that she needed. No, she was too
Speaker 1: far out there for the masses to adopt. So she
Speaker 1: needed a smart thing. She didn't complain or conform. Instead,
Speaker 1: she made something the masses didn't want. She made something
Speaker 1: for the early adopters. She refused to pigeonhole it. She
Speaker 1: didn't have to hype it because the early adopters they're
Speaker 1: looking for something on the edge, and she had something
Speaker 1: on the edge. And then of course it spreads, right.
Speaker 1: The first thing that happens is the art director says,
Speaker 1: get me Jill Greenberg. And then of course the art
Speaker 1: director says, get me someone who looks like Jill Greenberg,
Speaker 1: and then you know you've made it. So the goal here,
Speaker 1: when we are making our best work, the work we
Speaker 1: seek to make, is not to listen to the people
Speaker 1: in the middle of the curve, because the people in
Speaker 1: the middle of the curve aren't listening to us. The
Speaker 1: goal is not the Flintstones or the Brady Bunch or
Speaker 1: the Beverly Hillbillies. The goal is to go to the fringe,
Speaker 1: to the edge to the people who are listening, to
Speaker 1: the people who care, not with a bally, but with
Speaker 1: something real, to invite them in and to tell them
Speaker 1: something that they didn't know before, to bring them something
Speaker 1: that's a little more complicated than an NBC executive would
Speaker 1: have gone for, to take them on a journey from
Speaker 1: here to there, not with a grand opening, but with
Speaker 1: a small opening, with a whisper here. I made this, here,
Speaker 1: I made this. That's our work. After the break, some questions,
Speaker 1: questions for me, how we're going to do that? And
Speaker 1: then a question for you. Hi again, this is I
Speaker 1: and Seagull, CEO and co founder of zip Recruiter, The
Speaker 1: Smartest Way to Hire. So you have a big idea,
Speaker 1: how do you know if it's ready for the big time.
Speaker 1: It's difficult to get honest feedback about a new business idea.
Speaker 1: A lot of people will tell you what you want
Speaker 1: to hear. That's why I encourage what I call the
Speaker 1: eyebrow test. Here's how you do it. Describe your business
Speaker 1: to someone in one paragraph or less, but the whole
Speaker 1: time I want you to stare at their eyebrows while
Speaker 1: you're talking and pretty much ignore the words that are
Speaker 1: coming out of their mouth. We all have an almost
Speaker 1: uncontrollable reaction. When we like something, our eyebrows go up.
Speaker 1: When we don't like what we're hearing, eyebrows scrunch. Eyebrows
Speaker 1: never lie. If you aren't regularly seeing raised eyebrows, your
Speaker 1: idea isn't ready. That's the importance of eyebrows. I hope
Speaker 1: you found it helpful. Here's something else that may be helpful.
Speaker 1: If you're hiring. You can try zippercruter for free today.
Speaker 1: Zippercruters helped businesses of all sizes and across all industries
Speaker 1: hire great people. In fact, eight percent of employers who
Speaker 1: use zip recruiter find a quality candidate through the site
Speaker 1: and just one day. Just go to zippercruter dot com
Speaker 1: slash seth that zippercruter dot com slash seth. Thanks for
Speaker 1: listening and see you on the next episode. Alright, questions,
Speaker 1: This is the first episode, so I don't have your
Speaker 1: questions yet about episode zero because there wasn't an episode zero. Instead,
Speaker 1: we're teeing you guys up to give me feedback and
Speaker 1: questions about this episode, which I'll answer next time. If
Speaker 1: you want to give us a question, just visit a
Speaker 1: Kimbo dot link and click the appropriate button. And while
Speaker 1: we're waiting to hear from you, here's a question for
Speaker 1: you and your team. How would it be different if
Speaker 1: you weren't in the hype business, if you weren't focused
Speaker 1: on Hoopla and the ratings and how many likes you
Speaker 1: have right this minute? How would you build your product,
Speaker 1: or your service or your cause if your goal was
Speaker 1: to make it deeper and more elegant, if complexity wasn't
Speaker 1: a challenge it was a goal. What would happen if
Speaker 1: instead of seeking to make noise, you decided to do
Speaker 1: something that mattered instead. If you want to submit a question,
Speaker 1: just visit a Kimbo dot link a k I M
Speaker 1: B O dot l I n K and click on
Speaker 1: the appropriate button. See you next time. What are people
Speaker 1: saying about the Alto m b A. I just needed something,
Speaker 1: something more, a way to level myself up and find
Speaker 1: other kind of connection. Really, Beachell, Maybe I operated for
Speaker 1: ten years in my life and this is what was
Speaker 1: my best space. But then in all Temba, you learned
Speaker 1: what was your best on Monday. It's going to be
Speaker 1: better on Tuesday night, and you're going to do it
Speaker 1: in a space where everyone cares about you so much
Speaker 1: that they're not going to let you off the hook
Speaker 1: al Temba. In fact, it's not a course, it's a workshop.
Speaker 1: It's one month in which a professional coming from all
Speaker 1: of the globe can work with one hundred other professionals
Speaker 1: that will make you a better leader. Not enough time.
Speaker 1: We know it's not enough time. Do it anyway. Some
Speaker 1: of people want to self edit, They want to say
Speaker 1: I have writer's blog, all these excuses basically, and so
Speaker 1: this is just an exercise and getting out of your
Speaker 1: own way and also collaboration. It's more about how you
Speaker 1: think what you're willing to offer yourself and the group.
Speaker 1: I have a clearer vision with my company and who
Speaker 1: I'm trying to build it for, really having a lot
Speaker 1: of skills to speak more confidently about who I wanted
Speaker 1: to be in where I wanted to go. Find out
Speaker 1: more at alt NBA dot com. It's a simple question, really,
Speaker 1: but I think it helps us understand so much of
Speaker 1: the world around us. The question who eats first, whether
Speaker 1: you're a wild animal, a b or a human, status
Speaker 1: folds matter. Hey, it's seth and this is a Kimbo
Speaker 1: and now a word from zip Recruiter are presenting sponsor.
Speaker 1: When it comes to hiring, we can learn a lot
Speaker 1: from vikings Hi. I'm Ian Siegel, and I'm the CEO
Speaker 1: and co founder of zipp Recruiter, The Smartest way to hire.
Speaker 1: Being an entrepreneur and owning a business has been a
Speaker 1: dream of mine since I was a kid, and I've
Speaker 1: learned a lot of interesting things while turning that dream
Speaker 1: into a reality, like why talking like a Viking can
Speaker 1: be helpful when you're hiring. More on that later. I
Speaker 1: founded zipp Recruiter because I knew there was a simpler,
Speaker 1: more efficient, and more effective way for people to find
Speaker 1: jobs that they love and for businesses to find fantastic employees.
Speaker 1: And if you're hiring now, you can try zipp recruiter
Speaker 1: for free at zipp recruiter dot com slash seth. Employers
Speaker 1: who post on zipp recruiter get a quality candidate through
Speaker 1: the site and just one day. So try it for
Speaker 1: free at zipp recruiter dot com slash seth. See you
Speaker 1: later in the show Baxter Hates Truman. Baxter's my dog,
Speaker 1: great dog from the shelter. He was about sixty pounds.
Speaker 1: He gets along with all the other dogs except for Truman.
Speaker 1: Truman's the wonderful German shepherd who lives across the street,
Speaker 1: Proud Legal, a few years older than Baxter, and they
Speaker 1: hate each other. And the reason, I think is it's
Speaker 1: not clear who gets the first, who's the alpha, who's
Speaker 1: in charge. When I was in fifth grade, I ran
Speaker 1: for president of the Safety Patrol and I lost. And
Speaker 1: the ninth and ten and eleven and twelfth grade I
Speaker 1: ran for student council president and I lost. My senior year,
Speaker 1: I had the best signs. I put myself out there
Speaker 1: and I lost. I got to college and I ran
Speaker 1: for dorm rep unopposed, and I lost. I don't think
Speaker 1: the question is why I kept losing. I kept losing
Speaker 1: because people weren't voting for me. They didn't see me
Speaker 1: for how I saw myself. The interesting question is why
Speaker 1: did I keep running? So let's begin with business cards.
Speaker 1: Joel Bauer has made a famous meme on the internet
Speaker 1: about your business card. You see a business card, cheap
Speaker 1: strath more stock holds a crease and the best riff.
Speaker 1: In the movie American Psycho is about some insecure people comparing,
Speaker 1: of all things, their business cards. Look at that subtle
Speaker 1: love way coloring, a tasteful thickness of it. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: it even has a watermark. Why do business cards even matter?
Speaker 1: How can this little piece of paper somehow be construed
Speaker 1: as a representation of who we are? And why do
Speaker 1: we care? Well, if we think about the Godfather, we
Speaker 1: can start to understand how status rolls are portrayed in
Speaker 1: the media and how we internalize them and believe them.
Speaker 1: In the opening scene of The Godfather Borno Sarah, the Undertaker,
Speaker 1: the lowest status person in the community, pounds balding wearing
Speaker 1: a nondescript suit. The Undertaker comes to see the Godfather.
Speaker 1: The day he chooses is the day of the Godfather's
Speaker 1: daughter's wedding, says Billion. Tradition, according to the movie, is
Speaker 1: that the Godfather cannot refuse a favor asked of him
Speaker 1: on this special day. So in this moment, the Godfather
Speaker 1: is vulnerable. He's vulnerable because his status can be questioned.
Speaker 1: The Undertaker comes to him and asks him to perform
Speaker 1: violence on some men who have hurt his daughter. The Godfather,
Speaker 1: Marlon Brando, turns to Bonus Saran sais he cannot do it,
Speaker 1: of course, because if he did, it would make him
Speaker 1: nothing but a hired thug. Bonus, Sarah raises the stakes
Speaker 1: he offers to pay the Godfather, which of course is
Speaker 1: an insult. It turns him from a mere hired thug
Speaker 1: to a hired thug who's just doing it for the money.
Speaker 1: And in that moment where the status rolls of the
Speaker 1: high status, status seeking Godfather is threatened by the low
Speaker 1: status undertaker, we see writ large something that's been going
Speaker 1: on for millennia. We understand the relationship between Baxter and
Speaker 1: Truman because it turns out that throughout the animal kingdom,
Speaker 1: including an especially humans, status roles matter. Just about everything
Speaker 1: you will ever see in a movie theater or a theater,
Speaker 1: or read about in a novel is about status roles.
Speaker 1: The movie Trading Places is about status roles. The sitcoms
Speaker 1: of the sixties, the comedies of the eighties, the thrillers
Speaker 1: that we see today, they're all about who's moving up,
Speaker 1: who's moving down. But of course it happens in real life,
Speaker 1: and of course it doesn't have anything to do with money.
Speaker 1: Think about that meditation weekend, nothing but spirituality. Except some
Speaker 1: people at the weekend, our friends with the instructor, so
Speaker 1: they have a little bit more status. And of course
Speaker 1: the guest instructor is wearing a special outfit and sitting
Speaker 1: in a special chair, so he has a little bit
Speaker 1: more status. Tribes, these informal groups of people that we
Speaker 1: are all part of, demand status roles because it's a
Speaker 1: form of governance who's up and who's down. And capitalism
Speaker 1: requires status roles because it gets people to work even
Speaker 1: after they have enough. That the ability to be able
Speaker 1: to say I might not have everything, but I have
Speaker 1: more than you is buried deep within our culture that
Speaker 1: what we have done is built layer after layer after
Speaker 1: layer in commerce and in community based around our roles,
Speaker 1: our status, our business card are standing in the community,
Speaker 1: those Laberton shoes that she's wearing, that Birken bag, who's
Speaker 1: sitting at the cool table at lunch, who's the head
Speaker 1: of the football team or the cheerleading squad or the
Speaker 1: student council, that we repeatedly look at other people and
Speaker 1: decide where we stand. And what marketers have done is
Speaker 1: run with this. What politicians have done is run with
Speaker 1: this because we understand that deep down human beings care
Speaker 1: about it. Keith Johnstone in his brilliant book. Impro spends
Speaker 1: the first third of the book talking about how theater
Speaker 1: is nothing but this exchange of status rolls. Professional wrestling
Speaker 1: is nothing but an exchange of status rolls. Nursery school
Speaker 1: is status roles. Who gets to play with the blocks?
Speaker 1: Is it the kid who's the biggest? How do we
Speaker 1: treat somebody who's wearing a cute outfit versus one who isn't.
Speaker 1: How are we looking and juxtaposing who has status and
Speaker 1: who doesn't, and which status matters. If you had a
Speaker 1: chance to watch the videos of Donald Trump shaking hands
Speaker 1: with various world leaders, what you see is an ancient ritual,
Speaker 1: a battle for supremacy in something as absurd as a handshake.
Speaker 1: And when a policeman pulls you over for speeding, in
Speaker 1: that exchange at the window of your car will be
Speaker 1: a debate about status roles. Are you going to play
Speaker 1: low and let the policeman play high? Are you going
Speaker 1: to take umbrage and say don't you know who I
Speaker 1: am and try to get the policeman to play low.
Speaker 1: We're not on the savannah anymore. We're not lions or
Speaker 1: hippo's deciding who gets the eat first and who just
Speaker 1: gets the scraps, and yet certainly seems that way. Four
Speaker 1: old friends who haven't seen each other in a while
Speaker 1: get together over lunch. The first one, beaming, pulls out
Speaker 1: his iPhone X, brand new, the most profitable consumer product
Speaker 1: ever created. The iPhone hasn't offered much new in the
Speaker 1: way of functionality in five years, but people keep buying
Speaker 1: the new one, and he knows why, putting it on
Speaker 1: the table. Gingerly, he's moved up in status. His friend
Speaker 1: to the left pulls out his pixel phone from Google
Speaker 1: Android based a way of showing he's smarter than his friend.
Speaker 1: He bought something with more power, not to be outdone.
Speaker 1: The third friend pulls out a waterproof flip phone twelve
Speaker 1: years old. Doesn't matter, He's all about the functionality. The
Speaker 1: fourth friend, though the status of no status, doesn't have
Speaker 1: a phone at all, doesn't need a phone. His admin
Speaker 1: will take care of it. And around the circle we go.
Speaker 1: How do we keep it running in a society as
Speaker 1: rich as ours, with so many resources available? How do
Speaker 1: we keep it going? How do we keep making people
Speaker 1: upset and frustrated when they don't have enough status? How
Speaker 1: do we get people to work all night even though
Speaker 1: they have enough to earn more status. How do we
Speaker 1: create life and death situations? How do we push people
Speaker 1: to go into debt for status? While it turns out
Speaker 1: that shame, shame that basic human emotion, one of the
Speaker 1: top six emotions that people experience. You know, you've got happiness,
Speaker 1: you've got fear, and then right up there is shame.
Speaker 1: Shame is the status enforcer. That what we have done
Speaker 1: is orchestrate a culture where if you are surrounded by
Speaker 1: people with more status than you, or if you believe
Speaker 1: that they have more status than you, we've instructed you
Speaker 1: to feel shame. And we hate shame. Shames the deal killer.
Speaker 1: Shame undermines all of the things that we seek to have.
Speaker 1: So to avoid shame, we make bad decisions. We make
Speaker 1: decisions that honor marketers or those that would manipulate us
Speaker 1: as opposed to doing what's best for us and the
Speaker 1: people around us. And it's important that we learned to
Speaker 1: see it that. Once you see it, once you see
Speaker 1: how this juxtaposition between status and shame is you over
Speaker 1: and over again, you can see how you're being manipulated,
Speaker 1: manipulated to vote, manipulated to work, manipulated to purchase. That
Speaker 1: status all by itself has no real value outside of
Speaker 1: an arena where someone's trying to take something from us.
Speaker 1: That the rest of the time, it's in our head.
Speaker 1: It's the story we are telling ourselves about our worth,
Speaker 1: about our business card, about how we are being judged.
Speaker 1: As always there's insight from the good doctor Dr Seuss.
Speaker 1: In Eural the turtle, turtles, more turtles, he bellowed and braid,
Speaker 1: And the turtles way down in the pond were afraid.
Speaker 1: They trembled, they shook, but they came. They obeyed. From
Speaker 1: all over the pond. They came, swimming by dozens, whole
Speaker 1: families of turtles, with uncles and cousins, and all of
Speaker 1: them stepped on the head of poor Mac. One after another.
Speaker 1: They climbed up the stack. What marketers have learned is
Speaker 1: that the shame engine, the tribal shame engine, won't stop working.
Speaker 1: All they have to do is highlighted, press on it gently,
Speaker 1: sometimes with an anvil, but often gently, and remind us
Speaker 1: that we don't want to be at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the pile. They remind us with images and offers and
Speaker 1: sales that if we don't respond, we're going to have
Speaker 1: to deal with shame and it's all in our head.
Speaker 1: Consider the market for luxury goods last year. It was
Speaker 1: more than thirty billion dollars spent worldwide to buy things
Speaker 1: that were more expensive and probably a little bit nicer
Speaker 1: than we needed. Lugging or perfume or shoes. The list
Speaker 1: goes on and on. It turns out the industry was
Speaker 1: invented by one man named Colbert in France. He worked
Speaker 1: for the king. The French had a problem, which is
Speaker 1: they weren't doing very well as imperialists. Spain and England
Speaker 1: were colonizing other countries, building markets, gaining raw materials better
Speaker 1: than the French were. So Colbert put in place a
Speaker 1: ratchet away to raise more taxes for the king and
Speaker 1: to build export markets. And the idea was that they
Speaker 1: would bless certain industries, give them protections and support, and
Speaker 1: thus France became the leader in things like lace and
Speaker 1: leather goods. They figured out how to make things better
Speaker 1: than they needed to be so that people who wanted
Speaker 1: to demonstrate their status could spend extra money and gain
Speaker 1: a symbol that would allow them to do this, and
Speaker 1: hundreds of years later it continues, the race for more status,
Speaker 1: not more than anyone in the world, just more than
Speaker 1: people in your circle, continues, and the digital world makes
Speaker 1: it even easier to play the game that Instagram and
Speaker 1: Snap and Facebook give each one of us a stage,
Speaker 1: a stage to prance on and show our status, to
Speaker 1: humble brag our way into showing that we're just a
Speaker 1: little bit better than the people around us, or if
Speaker 1: we choose a place to go to feel badly about ourselves,
Speaker 1: to experience shame because somebody else is moving up while
Speaker 1: we are moving down these networks, and they're busy calling
Speaker 1: people around your friends even though you don't even know them.
Speaker 1: Have figured out how to digitize, how to enumerate, how
Speaker 1: to rank, how to create a game where we are
Speaker 1: all the players, but we're not the customers. We are
Speaker 1: the product. Where the product so that someone else, the advertiser,
Speaker 1: can pay money to reach us, And the thing that
Speaker 1: they are extracting from us is our attention. We give
Speaker 1: our attention in exchange for avoiding the shame of feeling
Speaker 1: like we are falling behind in status. So like the Godfather,
Speaker 1: like the person at the meditation retreat, like the person
Speaker 1: who's figuring out what shoes to wear to today's meeting
Speaker 1: or wondering whether our business card is good enough or not.
Speaker 1: We're all captive on this merry go round, a carousel,
Speaker 1: around and around and around, playing a status game where
Speaker 1: some people are using status to extract behavior from us,
Speaker 1: and other people are busy trying to gain status so
Speaker 1: in their mind they can win. So what to do
Speaker 1: about it? Well, two things. First of all, if you're
Speaker 1: trying to do something important, something beneficial, something good, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to get someone to adopt a different way
Speaker 1: of being, I think it's worth paying attention to the
Speaker 1: status of the people you are working with and the
Speaker 1: changes that you are offering, because when your change promises
Speaker 1: to move someone's status up, they are way more likely
Speaker 1: to listen to you. That status roles inform every decision
Speaker 1: that we make, and if you're trying to sell an
Speaker 1: idea to someone, you need to be aware of them.
Speaker 1: But what if you're on the other end of the equation,
Speaker 1: What if there's a long history of status roles being
Speaker 1: used against you, Well, one more time, we can go
Speaker 1: back to the good Doctor Dr Seuss at the end
Speaker 1: of your the Turtle and today the great Yurdle, that
Speaker 1: marvelous he is king of the mud. That's all he
Speaker 1: can see. And the turtles. Of course, all the turtles
Speaker 1: are free as turtles, and maybe all creatures should be.
Speaker 1: Interesting things happened when we start tweaking status rolls. The
Speaker 1: Union Square Hospitality Group is a chain of restaurants high
Speaker 1: end restaurants in New York City. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: they decided to do away with tipping and instead add
Speaker 1: a service charge to every bill. They did this for
Speaker 1: a few reasons. One reason is that by law, the
Speaker 1: people on the back of the house, the people who
Speaker 1: cooked the food, aren't allowed to take a share of
Speaker 1: the tips. So what was happening was there was a
Speaker 1: huge gulf between how much some people were paid and
Speaker 1: how much others were paid. By adding a service charge,
Speaker 1: they were able to treat everyone on the team as
Speaker 1: a professional. And what they discovered was it it shifted
Speaker 1: and shifted the posture of the people in the back
Speaker 1: who were paid more fairly, but also changed the way
Speaker 1: the service staff acted instead of it being a sexist
Speaker 1: or racist lottery where how much you were going to
Speaker 1: get at the end of a meal was based on
Speaker 1: the whim of a diner and how he or she
Speaker 1: was dealing with their own narrative about status. The people
Speaker 1: in the front of the house were able to act
Speaker 1: like every other professional in a field, getting paid fairly
Speaker 1: for what they did and doing their best possible work.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to note that some of the customers are
Speaker 1: uncomfortable with this. That having tipping be taken away from
Speaker 1: their discretion doesn't change the service experience, but it very
Speaker 1: much changes the status experience. That if in our head
Speaker 1: we believe that our status role is impacted by our
Speaker 1: ability to leave or not leave a tip, by what
Speaker 1: our compatriots see do when we leave a tip, then
Speaker 1: part of the experience of going to a restaurant has shifted.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating to watch an experiment like this unfold because
Speaker 1: each of the parties involved is shifting their experience of status,
Speaker 1: often for the better. After the break, I'll be back
Speaker 1: with answers to the questions you submitted from the last episode.
Speaker 1: If you have a question about this one, please visit
Speaker 1: a Kimbo dot link and press the appropriate button. Hi again,
Speaker 1: this is Ian Seagull, CEO and co founder of zip Recruiter,
Speaker 1: The Smartest Way to Hire. So here's a quick interview.
Speaker 1: Tip A lot of people when they're interviewing a candidate,
Speaker 1: they try to make a friend, and the reality is
Speaker 1: that's not a great way to figure out what it's
Speaker 1: going to be like to work with someone because everybody's
Speaker 1: on their best behavior. That's why my number one interview
Speaker 1: tip is to talk like a viking. And what do
Speaker 1: I mean by that, I mean be direct. If they
Speaker 1: say something that you like, you tell them that you
Speaker 1: like what they just said, and you see how they react.
Speaker 1: If they something you don't like, you also tell them that,
Speaker 1: and you see how they react when you give them
Speaker 1: feedback that some would consider to be tough to take.
Speaker 1: That's one of the most important reads you can get
Speaker 1: an interview, and it's the way to find out what
Speaker 1: it's like to really work with somebody. That's the importance
Speaker 1: of being direct. I hope you found it helpful. Here's
Speaker 1: something else that may be helpful. If you're hiring, you
Speaker 1: can try zippercruter for free today. Zippercruters helped businesses of
Speaker 1: all sizes and across all industries hire great people. In fact,
Speaker 1: eighty percent of employers who use zipp recruiter find a
Speaker 1: quality candidate through the site, and just one day. Just
Speaker 1: go to zippercruter dot com slash seth. That's zippercuiter dot
Speaker 1: com slash seth. Thanks for listening and see you on
Speaker 1: the next episode. My name is Kyle Gray, and first
Speaker 1: of all, I love the show and that completes my
Speaker 1: question I said. This is Paul from Huntington Beach, California.
Speaker 1: This is Caitlin tis Warm, greetings from Kurosaw and greetings
Speaker 1: from Lithuania. Tons of questions came in last time. I
Speaker 1: was really gratified at all of the wonderful feedback you
Speaker 1: shared with me about the first episode of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Some tips for Q and A going forward.
Speaker 1: We're never going to be able to get to all
Speaker 1: the questions that you're submitting, and I apologize for that.
Speaker 1: The questions that I'll choose will tend to be specific
Speaker 1: about the previous episode. They'll tend to be general in
Speaker 1: that lots of people want to hear the answer, and
Speaker 1: they'll tend to be cogent, compressed, urgent so that they
Speaker 1: don't ramble. Here's our first question. My question is when
Speaker 1: you're doing your work, you see feedback. How do you
Speaker 1: use this feedback both positive and negative? Feedback in a
Speaker 1: manner that is constructive and makes your work better rather
Speaker 1: than reduce its quality. Thank you. The essence of the
Speaker 1: thinking behind one thousand true fans is that there are
Speaker 1: a few people who matter a lot more to the
Speaker 1: creator than other people, and that's the secret of processing feedback.
Speaker 1: When a critic doesn't get the joke, when they don't
Speaker 1: understand you, when it's not what they need or want, well,
Speaker 1: then there's nothing to be done about that. Let it go.
Speaker 1: Move on. On the other hand, when you hear from
Speaker 1: the core constituents, from the people that you're counting on,
Speaker 1: you need to listen very carefully to that feedback, treat
Speaker 1: different people differently, being on your own and indeed building
Speaker 1: something that will spark change in the community. If you
Speaker 1: want to still have a balanced life, I'm talking about
Speaker 1: raising kids and also um making sure that you get
Speaker 1: at least a couple of hours sleep a day. How
Speaker 1: do you manage to build something slowly but then at
Speaker 1: the same time make money to survive. This was the
Speaker 1: most common question that came in, and it's based on
Speaker 1: a fundamental misunderstanding of what I'm talking about. When I
Speaker 1: say that the grand opening is a mistake. Grand openings
Speaker 1: are expensive, they are fraught with risk, They are fool hardy.
Speaker 1: The other approach the smallest possible market, the idea that
Speaker 1: we can find our people and delight them while ignoring
Speaker 1: everyone else. That's not slow, that's smart. And so if
Speaker 1: you're going to make something, you have to be prepared
Speaker 1: for the fact that it's not going to work right away,
Speaker 1: that it might never work. If you're going to make something,
Speaker 1: you have to accept the fact that it's different than
Speaker 1: having a day job. Bank Tellers get paid when they
Speaker 1: show up at work every day. Creators don't. So I
Speaker 1: don't have a short cut for how to live the
Speaker 1: life you deserve, how to have a steady income while
Speaker 1: doing this work. That's beyond the scope of what we're
Speaker 1: talking about today. But what I am arguing for is
Speaker 1: that the most efficient, smartest productive way to do your
Speaker 1: work is not to wish and hope for the fairy
Speaker 1: of success to come and say everyone knows your idea,
Speaker 1: because she's not coming. That The alternative is to be specific,
Speaker 1: urgent and important and to make a difference for a
Speaker 1: few people, because then they'll spread the word and then
Speaker 1: you can do the work you wanted to do all
Speaker 1: along sometimes feels like you're saying that, uh, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter the quality at first, just get out there with
Speaker 1: your work, the work that you believe in. But then
Speaker 1: what if people give you, uh, their attention at first,
Speaker 1: and then you create this not perfect you know, ugly duckling,
Speaker 1: and then uh, people see it and they never take
Speaker 1: you seriously. Again, there's a big difference between just ship
Speaker 1: it and merely ship it. And I have never argued
Speaker 1: that people should just ship stuff out, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: just take a flyer, throw it into the world. Merely
Speaker 1: do it, though merely is something else. Merely do it
Speaker 1: means with focus and with care. You cannot know what
Speaker 1: your audience actually wants until you engage with them. So
Speaker 1: my argument is, yes, build it with care, build it
Speaker 1: as if everything depended on it. But no, don't hold
Speaker 1: it back in fear. Don't hold it back wondering and waiting.
Speaker 1: You must engage with the audience. Does that mean that
Speaker 1: some people you engage with who don't get the joke
Speaker 1: will write you off in the future. Probably, But if
Speaker 1: you want to go listen to Billy Joel's early demos
Speaker 1: was broken these world is always God, look at Jerry
Speaker 1: Seinfeldt's early stand up. Go find anybody whose work you
Speaker 1: care about and notice that at the beginning it wasn't
Speaker 1: that good. So you're saying to worry about organic traffic
Speaker 1: before anything else. I see a lot of creators I
Speaker 1: feel like should be getting traction faster than they are.
Speaker 1: When is advertising the answer? If ever, not, all ideas
Speaker 1: spread organically, and there's nothing wrong with advertising anticipated personal
Speaker 1: relevant advertising that reaches people who want to get it
Speaker 1: can be really effective. My argument is that it never
Speaker 1: makes sense to buy a Super Bowl ad ever, that
Speaker 1: you're not trying to reach everyone, but if you know
Speaker 1: specifically who you seek to reach by all means by
Speaker 1: the ads. Two good questions about Kevin Kelly's notion of
Speaker 1: one thousand true fans. How might you quickly and cheaply
Speaker 1: demonstrate the power of a thousand true fans to someone
Speaker 1: who's a nonbeliever when going through when building up our
Speaker 1: one thousand true fans, how do we know who to
Speaker 1: target and what to aim for? So let me take
Speaker 1: another minute to go through the math here. True fans
Speaker 1: aren't merely fans. There are people who show up with
Speaker 1: time and money, acting as patrons insisting that the work continue.
Speaker 1: One Thousand true fans are the core of how ideas spread.
Speaker 1: One thousand true fans can pay for a small team
Speaker 1: of people to create magical work. The math is pretty simple.
Speaker 1: If you've got one thousand people that will come to
Speaker 1: your rock concert weekend to spend time with the band
Speaker 1: and pay a thousand dollars each, that's a million dollars.
Speaker 1: When you've got one thousand true fans who are willing
Speaker 1: to subscribe to your work, paying every month, you can
Speaker 1: make a living on that. Can you support a giant corporation,
Speaker 1: of course not, But you can support an artist, a human,
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to make a difference. So how to
Speaker 1: choose these people? Because the people who choose you they
Speaker 1: might be fans, but true fans are a little different.
Speaker 1: True fans understand that they are actually engaged in the
Speaker 1: process of creation. True fans define their future through the
Speaker 1: work that the artist is doing. They're grateful for it,
Speaker 1: and they are willing to participate. So part of the
Speaker 1: discernment that we need as creators is to tell the
Speaker 1: difference between someone who will take our time and someone
Speaker 1: who will amplify our time. That's it for this round
Speaker 1: of questions one more time. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being part of this. If you want to see previous episodes,
Speaker 1: if you want to see the show notes, which are
Speaker 1: sort of cool, or if you want to ask a
Speaker 1: question for next time, head on over to a Kimbo
Speaker 1: dot link. That's a k I M b O dot
Speaker 1: l I n K until next time, keep making a ruckus. Thanks.
Speaker 1: People are talking about the Marketing Seminar. I was completely
Speaker 1: blown away. It was incredibly comprehensive, crazy, crazy, crazy useful.
Speaker 1: It's easily was five times what I paid for the course.
Speaker 1: The content in the class was awesome. What I learned
Speaker 1: I actually could apply immediately and get results. I thought
Speaker 1: it's gonna be kind of an automated course. And the
Speaker 1: big shock is the cohort. I have never felt more
Speaker 1: supported in any online program I've done. And I actually
Speaker 1: changed the way we talk about the project and changed
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Speaker 1: It's so much more than just a marketing seminar. Find
Speaker 1: out more at the Marketing Seminar dot com. Hello Dead beats.
Speaker 1: It's Gabby Gabby Done, host of Bad with Money. I
Speaker 1: had the Bad with Money book come out in January.
Speaker 1: I'm super stoked for season four. This season, we're going
Speaker 1: back to our roots and I'm having long conversations with
Speaker 1: amazing people and getting the big picture about money and
Speaker 1: the economy. Do you like intersectional, queer, social justice based
Speaker 1: money podcasts? This is the only one, so get into it.
Speaker 1: Did you earn it? You deserve to be like a
Speaker 1: billionaire when somebody who's working as a janitor or working
Speaker 1: in Walmart, or teacher or a teacher, yeah, certainly, or
Speaker 1: a teacher who may be working just as many hours
Speaker 1: as you, may be just as smart as you like.
Speaker 1: Does that make it okay that you have so much?
Speaker 1: I get paid once a month, so my my check
Speaker 1: accounts huge. It's like a tidal wave comes in and
Speaker 1: then on the second it's empty again. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: speaking my language. Bad with Money is back now for
Speaker 1: season four. Listen and stitch your Apple podcasts or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts.