YouSaid · the spoken record

Seth Godin

lines on the record
125
first
2016-02-10
most recent
2016-02-10
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “Doing it, then I ought ton't easy. I regularly spend months telling people that I'm unemployed and in between projects. And I regularly publicly quit the book business, which I did maybe for the last time a year, two years ago, more than two years ago. Your turn came out a year ago November. So what is that? 15 months ago, and I have written one word of a book since then.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  2. “Well, the good news is you did exactly the right thing, and I applaud it. It's not easy to do that because it means going from a place where by outside measures you are about to succeed again to a place where by outside measures you might not. And hence the motto, this might not work. And so on a good day, my story to myself is this might not work. That's my job, to do something that might not work. The number of projects I've done, big and small, exceeds most people's, and the number of failures I have dramatically exceeds most people's. And I'm super proud of that, more proud of the failures than the successes because it's about this mantra of is this generous, is this going to connect? Is this going to change people for the better? Is it worth trying? If it meets those criteria, and I can cajole myself.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  3. “I think that's part of the secret plan of Tim Ferris, which is that when you came out of the gate, it was or felt like here are some techniques and some shortcuts. And it was seen as an early version of the life-hacking thing. But I don't think that's what you're really doing. I think what you are really doing is saying to people, all right, now that you are so much more fit in every area, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually, what are you going to do with it? And when you think about the Seneca stuff and the podcast, that's where you've been going for a long time. And I, for one, just wanted to call you out and applaud you on it because it's not the easy path. It's the path that's important and you have been consistent and shown up and done the work.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  4. “I adore him. And he talked about offense versus defense. And if you think hard about one's life, most people spend most of their time on defense in reactive mode in playing with the cards they got instead of moving to a different table with different cards instead of Seeking to change other people, they are willing to be changed. And part of the arc of what I'm trying to teach is everyone who can hear this has more power than they think they do. And the question is what are you going to do with that power? Because it comes with responsibility right out of Spider-Man. But that responsibility is you're going to make change happen or you're going to ignore it. And if you make change happen, that's on you.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  5. “Well, because the phone rings, right? And lots of people want a thing. And if it doesn't align with the thing that is your mission and you say yes, then now it's their mission. And there's nothing wrong with being a wandering generality instead of a meaningful specific, but don't expect to make the change you seek to make if that's what you do. The thing is, and Derek, I thought your interview with Derek was one of the best ones you've ever done.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  6. “Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, what I did was, having studied a little bit of economics, is I changed I changed the price. Los Angeles cost three times as much as New York. And if you don't think that's fair, then don't make me go to Los Angeles.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  7. “What you have to say. And they set aside their Twitter account and they set aside their preconceptions. And for 45 minutes or an hour, you have a screen that's 30 feet by 20 feet and you have a microphone that's amplified. And maybe just maybe you can get under their skin. And if you do, maybe just maybe they go back to their office and get 10 copies of your turn and hand them out to their team. then I can do that practice that I seek, which is to change the conversation. So that's why I do it at all.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  8. “Never changed anyone's life with a speaking gig, but sometimes I do a speaking gig and they buy my cassettes. And if they buy my cassettes, I got a shot at changing their life. And for me, my mission, and has been for a long time, is to make a certain kind of change happen. I want to help people see the world differently. And if they choose to make a different choice after they see the world differently. I want to help people connect to each other and to use that connection to make things better. And I don't want to be a TV personality, so the question is, how do I bring that teaching to people? And what I found is it's a very unique situation when you have 500 or 5,000 high-powered people in a room who didn't expect that you were going to be there, but now that you're there, are eager to hear.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  9. “Oh, I'd be happy to, and then I will scroll back a little bit and tell you why I have to have rules for things like that. For speaking engagements, I don't want to do more than 30 a year because they are, at least for me, not additive to the joy of my day, except for the hour I'm on stage. So I am prepared to do an unlimited number of speaking engagements in zip code 10706. You know, Monday, I'm going to Carnegie Hall to talk for free to 25 music students who have devoted their lives to doing what they do. And it's a privilege to do something like that. If I have to get on an airplane, it's a whole other project. So I think really hard about what impact am I trying to make? And will this help me move things forward? Which is where this nests into. My mentor and late friend Zieg Ziegler used to talk about the idea, he used to say,”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  10. “I love reading books on paper. It's harder for me to read books on the Kindle when I'm not traveling because it doesn't have that prustian reminder to me of what a book actually means. So one of the things people in my generation are discovering is that people who are 20 or 30 are coming up viewing books as nothing but a reminder of the drudgery of high school. And if a book is on an electronic device, it's one click away from email and email is always better than reading a book if you're 25. And so I fear for the future of our medium because it doesn't have the place in our culture that it used to.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  11. “So there's a very high throughput of reading books before most people get to see them. And once you do it enough, you don't have to read the whole thing to get the joke. And every once in a while, it's good enough that you keep going. If I blurb it, it means I went all the way to the end.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  12. “Well, I'll start with I don't watch any television that's live and I feel strongly that most people shouldn't. I think that one of the single best hacks is that after Seinfeld won off the air, that was it. And we ripped it out and it frees up hours and hours every day to explore media or content that's up to you as opposed to somebody else. And I don't watch any TV at home recorded or otherwise. So that leaves me with books and Kindle and Music mostly. The thing with books is I really don't have the patience for literature. I didn't grow up with literature. I was an engineering college and I just never got the knack for decoding really dense fiction. And so on the other And like you, every day the mailman brings unsolicited books in the mail.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  13. “Music sound better and the act of carefully choosing what you're going to listen to and knowing that the heritage and the terroir of the thing behind it, it feels to me like a productive hobby that doesn't hurt anybody. So it's something I spend some time on.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  14. “I have no interest in baseball whatsoever, but this was like baseball in that you could track the careers of the various artisans and you could be on one side or the other of these discussions. So for me, you know, I started by buying inexpensive used stuff and there's a marketplace online called Audiogon with no E at the end where you can find people who buy things new and sell them six months later in perfect condition. And I found that connecting to the artisan, understanding their point of view, finding the guy in, I think he's in Cleveland who makes speaker wires by hand, finding Paul McGowan in Boulder, Colorado, who is at the cutting edge of certain parts of the stereo but not other ones, making them in bolder with a team of people, it gives me pleasure and that pleasure is a placebo.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  15. “Okay, so here's. The arc for me for many, many years has been railing against various industrial complexes. The TV industrial complex, the educational industrial complex, and this corporatization of just about everything. I was in China eight weeks ago. There's a village outside of Shenzhen called Dauphin, where they paint one-third of all the oil paintings in the world over and over as fast as they can. These paintings are art. They're merely paintings. They are what happens if a giant big box store needs 10,000 oil paintings. This is how they get them. What I discovered, I was at my friend Steve's house 20 years ago. And sterophiles handmade magazine about handmade audio equipment with people arguing with each other about this, that, and the other thing. A lot of arguing. And it was really fun to read.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  16. “Every single night I would go to get the freshest stuff. Anyway, a giant evil drugstore chain bought the place and tore it down and put up an evil drugstore. And so I didn't know how to commemorate this loss. I ended up going online to one of those places that sell those brass architectural plaques. Had a brass architectural plaque made honoring the place, and I affixed it to the side of the drugstore where it has. Where it has been for the last five years unmolested.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  17. “Yeah, exactly. Lots of people are afraid to find out. And that's why they're bad at cooking. And the thing I love about cooking, because my projects like yours sometimes last for years, is that cooking lasts for an hour. And at the end, you have success or failure. And that cycle of, I have an idea at four, and we're sitting down at six is one that I like very much. And I'll tell you a story that I don't think I've ever told out loud. I used to go shopping every single night because I cooked for the family for many, many years every single night, still mostly do. And I would stop at the Korean Delhi near my house. And it was a fish store. It was a flower shop. And it was a nice fresh vegetable place. And the man who owned it was a friend of mine. I used to bring him my Books when they were translated into Korean, which was fun.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  18. “You can even add them to ice cream. They just always work. So for me, part of the thoughtfulness is I don't use a lot of salt and I don't use a lot of oil because I know I could, but it's cheating. And I like to think about cooking again as a metaphor for most of what you have been teaching, the real lesson that you have been teaching, not the detail stuff, which is that it costs very little to find out”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  19. “Because before that book, you had to weave together a 30-minute narrative to help somebody think about what cooking meant. My wife Gamia Chris Schlesinger cooking class, and it was the only cooking class I'd ever taken. And in 20 minutes, I learned more about cooking than I think I've learned before or since. Wow. Because Chris basically taught me how to think about what you were trying to do and basically said A, you should taste the food as you go, which a surprisingly small number of people do. And B, he said, salt and olive oil actually are cheating and they're secret weapons and they always work.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  20. “A book is a bargain still a screaming bargain. You pay fifteen twenty bucks and you have something that might change your life, you have something that reminds you twenty years later sitting on the shelf where you were when you read it. I love buying books. And so the cookbook thing started with my mom's copy of the joy of cooking. And every time I saw a cookbook that seemed like I would get three good insights out of it, I bought it because it was a screaming bargain. And it grew and it grew and then Amazon showed up and one click shopping and maybe you should buy this one next. And every once, you know, growing up, people in my house would, the doorbell would ring and everyone go, Amazon's here.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  21. “Well, okay, so before Amazon, I was a book packager. And what book packagers do for a living is come up with ideas for books and then make them. And I made 120 books in 10 years, a book a month. I made bestsellers. I made books that sold no copies. I made books on gardening. And I did trivia projects. I made books all over the map. And the way you do that is A, you work with an expert. So my second book was Professor Herb Barnes on the spot and stain removal guide. And Herb was the world's expert on spot and stain removal. And the deal was, I got his notebook, he got half the money. I did all the work. But sometimes you don't have an expert with you. So what you do is you go to the bookstore and buy every book on the topic. And that's how my book collection grew to many thousands of books because”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  22. “I think it's really important that we get the scale properly here. I am meticulous compared to an amateur house painter. I am a slob compared to you. There is nothing about any of these tasks that could be described as meticulous. For example, the amount of oatmeal and honey varies wildly every single time. The coffee, probably a coffee snob would just turn up his nose.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  23. “So there's a place near my house called Stone Barnes that is actually used to be the Rockefeller summer house. It's a nice restaurant. And at the bar, I don't drink either. But I'm told that at the bar they serve honey oatmeal vodka. And I reverse engineered the recipe and have, it's not a still, but I make it in my basement. The recipe for those who are interested is you take a bottle of ICA, you don't want the super cheap stuff, but you don't want the expensive stuff because that's a little bit of a ripoff. And you pour it over like a pound of just plain old oatmeal uncooked and half a jar of honey and you let it sit in the fridge for two weeks stirring it now and then and then you strain it out back into the original bottle and you're done.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  24. “Which is you can spend a lot of time trying to fix stuff later, but starting with the right raw materials makes a huge difference.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT

  25. “Okay. Coffee thing Start there. I don't drink coffee. I wish I did. I need a vice, but I like making it. I like the act of trying without being one of those people who's like measuring everything because that's not my shtick to have an intuitive sense of what makes a good pull of espresso. And I used to have a fancy slayer machine, which is a super digital hunk of a device that did not belong in anyone's kitchen, particularly mine. So when it started acting up, I was able to sell it for a fair price and switched in the completely opposite direction to a Swiss made seventeen year old totally manual machine. Like you got to pull a handle. And I roast my own beans, which is key. Marco Arment taught me that. Roasting your own beans is more important than any other thing you can do if you want to make coffee. And I think there's a metaphor there. I know there's a metaphor there.”

    2016-02-10 · The Tim Ferriss Show · #138: How Seth Godin Manages His Life -- Rules, Principles, and Obsessions · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT