88: Seth Godin on Making a Ruckus, Being Bold & Knowing When to Quit

05/03/16 • 45 min

Nerv with Ryan Williams (Mushrooms, Mycology, and Mycellium)

Seth Godin is a marketer, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He's one of my favorite public speakers and an inspiring figure in the marketing world. I have talked about him a lot on the podcast.

Seth was founder and CEO of Yoyodyne, an interactive direct marketing company, which Yahoo! acquired in 1998. Seth worked as VP Direct Marketing at Yahoo until 2000, whcih is when his career pivoted in the direction of authoring books, public speaking and and blogging.

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Seth Godin speaks in depth about the iizard brain which is something that holds us back in reaching our goals and is an irrational part of our human behavior. Have you ever wanted to accomplish something but there's a voice of anxiety telling us to go slow or be careful? That is the lizard brain, which is a pre-historic lump that is responsible for rage, fear and our reproductive drive. And now it gets in the way of us shipping our work, products or ideas.

Seth Godin explained to me that this happens when we say we want one thing, then we do another. Like when we say they want to be successful but then sabotage a job interview. Or we say that we want our product to come to market, but we sandbag their shipping schedule. Or we want to be thin, but never work out. He quotes Steven Pressfield, who calls this process the resistance. "The resistance is writer's block and putting jitters and every project that ever shipped late because people couldn't stay on the same page long enough to get something out the door." It's something we all face.

And if you have not read Seth Godin's The Dip, Linchpin or Purple Cow, I recommend that you stop listening and buy them from Amazon.com. The Dip is a favorite book of mine that helped me move on from a job that I wanted to quit. I eventually was laid off from this job, which turned out to be one of the best career moves of my life.

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Quotes about The Dip from Seth Godin:

"The only way to become the best at one thing is to quit something else. And the thesis of the book is that we live in a culture where supposedly quitting is a bad thing. But people quit stuff all the time.”

“You need to figure out if you quit or stick,” but you also need to know that the Dip is “a temporary setback that can be overcome with persistence.”

We also talk about how Brad Feld invested in Seth's startup, and how Seth's company published Derek Sivers' book Anything You Want.

Seth Godin's The Dip: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/

Seth Godin's Book List: http://sethgodin.com/sg/books.asp

Seth Godin's Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

By Seth Godin's books on Amazon, click here.

Seth Godin is a marketer, entrepreneur, and best-selling author. He's one of my favorite public speakers and an inspiring figure in the marketing world. I have talked about him a lot on the podcast.

-Sign-up for our email list and I'll send The Influencer Economy Work Book: 7 Habits of Influencers. http://www.influencereconomy.com/

Quotes about The Dip from Seth Godin:

“You need to figure out if you quit or stick,” but you also need to know that the Dip is “a temporary setback that can be overcome with persistence.”

We also talk about how Brad Feld invested in Seth's startup, and how Seth's company published Derek Sivers' book Anything You Want.

Seth Godin's The Dip: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/the_dip/

Seth Godin's Book List: http://sethgodin.com/sg/books.asp

Seth Godin's Blog: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/

By Seth Godin's books on Amazon, click here.

Previous Episode

87: Podcaster MasterClass w/ Hrishikesh Hirway of Song Exploder

Hrishikesh Hirway is a musician, story-teller, and podcast host who hosts Song Exploder, a podcast where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, telling the story of how they were made. He has had inspiring and loved musicians such as U2, Björk, Postal Service and Spoon on the show. Hrishikesh is a podcast mastercraftsman and we talk in depth about his creative process and how he launched his idea to the world. We dive into how he created one of the most successful music podcasts.

As a podcast listener Song Exploder invites you into the mindset and framework of some of the bigger touring acts and indie artists in the music world. You can hear Wilco's Jeff Wilco explain what inspired him to write the song Magnetized. Or U2's The Edge breaking down the process for how the music was written for U2's song Cedarwood Road, and Bono looks back at his life growing up in Dublin where he was inspired to write the song. And Postal Service's Jimmy Tamborello shares the District Sleeps Alone Tonight, and talks about his instruments, his influences, and accidentally making a loop out of Jenny Lewis's backing vocals.

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Hrishikesh doesn't ask the artists about their big hit singles or world-wide hits. The songs are often personal and intimate tracks, composed and created by the artist. Song Exploder is an intimate and personal window into the world of how artists create, write, and score the songs that people love.

Hrishikesh talks in depth about how he created the idea for Song Exploder, launched it to the world with the help of Jesse Thorn the Maximum Fun (a podcast network) and is thriving as part of the Radiotopia network.

And I want to give a high five to my friends Kerri Hoffman and Maggie Taylor at PRX

If you like this episode, feel free to tag @songexploder (https://twitter.com/songexploder) on Twitter to give Rishi some love.

Song Exploder: http://songexploder.net/

RadioTopia: http://www.radiotopia.fm/

PRX: http://www.prx.org/

Ryan Williams' Influencer Economy website: http://www.influencereconomy.com/

Next Episode

89: Book Annoucement! Influencer Economy: How to Launch, Share and Thrive in the Digital Age

When Ryan Williams began attending VidCon, Comic-Con, South by Southwest (SXSW), TechCrunch Disrupt and other tech and fan-geek conferences. he noticed two remarkable things: these events were celebrating geeks, technology, and modern social media; and no one was telling the stories of the awesome people embracing this new form of influence and the wildly successful businesses they were creating.

---If you can't tell by now, this is my official book description and media release. As always thanks for the support You can buy the book on Amazon here: http://influencereconomybook.com/ I work hard and focus in giving out practical advice and actionable insights throughout my podcast and career. This a big moment both my career and business life, I would love your support in buying the book, or giving it away to a friend. <3 Much Love, Ryan <3

Ryan Williams is a former stand-up comedian turned tech entrepreneur. He was a founding team member at DigiSynd, a pioneering social media marketing group, acquired by Disney in 2008. After leaving Disney to join the Machinima.com, a YouTube video network for the gaming generation, he drove network growth to over 4 Billion video views a month, focused on influencer-driven YouTube video creation. As a start-up marketing executive, he has lead go-to-market product launches for global companies such as Disney, Microsoft, Activision, and Warner Bros.

In 2014, Ryan went on to launch a popular podcast dedicated to interviewing the pioneers of what he calls the Influencer Economy. After speaking to more than a hundred artists, experts, and entrepreneurs--from world-famous YouTubers to New York Times best-selling authors to the most creative start-up founders and investors on the planet--he reverse engineered their careers, to understand the stories behind their success, and now presents everything he learned in The Influencer Economy.

The three primary steps to success in the Influencer Economy -- launch, share and thrive -- can be applied to both business and life. Ryan tells the fascinating stories of more than a dozen people who turned their visions, ideas, and hobbies into influential and profitable digital media empires. He provides the "Influencer School Lessons" derived from each of these individual's journeys. As well as specific actions that readers can take to follow on the way to launching their own ideas into the online universe.

In order to thrive in the digital age, you don't need to go to business school. You don't need an Ivy League degree. You don't need to know celebrities. And you don't need to have a lot of money. You just need to learn the new business framework from the leaders of the Influencer Economy. _____________________________________________________________________________

Ryan Williams is an entrepreneur, writer, podcast host and former stand-up comedian. He is the Founder of Ryno Lab; a collaborative influencer-based studio that helps brands and entrepreneurs create digital products, build networks and thrive in the digital age. Ryan's professional experience includes 12 years in marketing, business development, and entertainment. He was an early team member at the venture-backed startups DigiSynd (acquired by Disney), Machinima.com and State.com. He hosts Stories from the Influencer Economy podcast, featured in Apple's "New and Noteworthy" in 2015. He currently lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife and two daughters.