Jasmine Star 00:00:00  Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show, a place where we get to talk about business mindset. And y'all know I love marketing, but I love marketing when I am batting outside of my league, when I get to watch the man, the myth, the legend talk, I date and share everything he knows about marketing. I couldn't be more honored and excited to welcome back for the second time, Seth Godin to the Jazz and Star podcast. Seth, thank you so much for being here.

Seth Godin 00:00:25  You're not out of your league. You are the holy. It is.

Jasmine Star 00:00:29  Okay, you know what? I will not deny that compliment. You know, as a deep, deep reader and lover of your books and your blog, one of the things that I have to admire so deeply is the deep empathy that you share with the people. And when you create, you're coming from a very empathetic place. And I feel it in your reading and writing. And so as we talk about marketing and as the landscape in marketing has changed so wildly since you began marketing and what it looks like today, it feels like and I haven't been doing it as long as you have, but it feels like with each progressive iteration of marketing, it seems like empathy has a tendency to get a little bit less and a little bit less and a little bit less.

Jasmine Star 00:01:09  As we talk about marketing, as we talk about strategy, this is a zone I love. How do we first and foremost keep empathy at the forefront of our marketing? But right now our conversation is, well.

Seth Godin 00:01:18  You know, cookies are a food and so is tofu. But if we can keep confusing them back and forth, we're never going to get anywhere. So marketing doesn't mean what some people think it means. Some people think that marketing is hustle and hype, that it clicks and views, that it's interrupting people and commands. I don't think that's what marketing is, and my 25 or 30 years of writing about this has gone to great pains to point out that marketing and advertising used to be the same thing, and they're not anymore. And so the people who are stressed Are stressed because they are running faster in the wrong direction. They are stressed because they think they have a marketing problem when actually they have a strategy problem and empathy problem a problem of lack of clarity. So there's never been a better time to contribute.

Seth Godin 00:02:16  There's never been a better time to show up. But and there's never been a worse time to try to get people's attention.

Jasmine Star 00:02:25  We're going to get into this deeply, but one of the things I would love to do is I have always learned by way of example and by way of storytelling. And so please feel free on this show, because I know you're doing a lot of shows in preparation of this amazing book. And please know that I do not have people who come on my podcast talking about a new book that I have not read myself. I'm fascinated with the whole thing about it. I think it's brilliantly written. I specifically love the two short paragraphs, these ideas that I actually went back to your blog, Seth and I said, did I miss some blogs that somehow ended up in the book? And so I was cross-referencing. I was plotting out this interview, and I thought to myself, brilliant, I absolutely love it. But if you if you would allow me, there was a book that you had written called Song of Significance.

Jasmine Star 00:03:07  And to the best of my recollection, I was listening to an interview years ago, and you had said that at the end of recording the audio book of Song of Significance, you had cried and you had cried because it had come from such a deep place that you felt like this was just an act of love to the world. And now I have to ask, from a strategic perspective, from a book that meant and weighed so much to recording the audio version of this book, what did you feel? What was it different? How does the strategy of each book play differently?

Seth Godin 00:03:37  What do you see place to talk about? Halfway through the book, I severely injured my vocal chords and so I didn't cry. But I ended up in the doctor's office and I haven't been able to finish it. I had to take a month off and hopefully we'll get there. This is a book about tools. It's a book that says, here's dozens or hundreds of questions that will help you get where you seek to go.

Seth Godin 00:04:04  And so it's not personal about me. It's personal about you and the people it has resonated with have said, you didn't tell me what to do, but you did tell me how to do it in a way that lines up with what I want. So if your goal is to get more people to recycle cardboard, you need a strategy. If your goal is to sell more bicycles, you need a strategy. So a lot of people who want to be Jasmine Star say, what I need is millions of people to watch me and trust me on podcasts and YouTube. But it's too late for them because we already have a Jasmine star. They need a different strategy to accomplish their goal, but they don't need to copy your tactics Because the tactics keep changing faster and faster and faster. And if all we're going to do is find some guru and do exactly what they say, we're always going to be two years behind.

Jasmine Star 00:05:07  So when we think about this in the context of strategy, and the first book was about you and this book is about me.

Jasmine Star 00:05:15  It's about all of us. I will say as a side note, I would add to the description of the book is that it didn't teach me a tactic. It taught me how to think. It taught me how to question. And I believe that one of my strengths is being a highly strategic person. But I had to ask myself very different questions. I felt very exposed. I felt very weak, I felt very challenged, and I was in the right place, like, I'm reading this book and I'm like, no, no, this hurts. This hurts too deep in all of the best ways. So before we talk about marketing and strategy, there was also the story you had spoken about how you wore a Google T-shirt. So I want you, if you remember, about somebody who spotted you wearing a Google t shirt, and I want to use that as a foundation to kind of string through the remainder of this conversation to go back to what this idea is. Okay, cool. Thank you.

Seth Godin 00:05:56  Well, I think I last told that story about eight years ago, but.

Jasmine Star 00:05:59  I think we're bringing it back. It's an oldie but goodie.

Seth Godin 00:06:01  So right at the beginning, after Google was founded, I was a VP at Yahoo! Yahoo had the chance to buy Google for $10 million altogether, and someone other than me said that was a bad idea. A couple years later, I gave a talk at Google and instead of paying me an appropriate fee, they gave me a damn t shirt. So I'm wearing the t shirt in Union Square in New York City, and this attractive woman from about 100 yards away sees me and she runs straight at me and she says, Google, do you work at Google? I love Google. Google is my best friend. And that really struck me because that is what it is to have a brand, not a logo, not an ad campaign. Google had no ads. It was simply what change are you making in the world? What does it stand for? Would we miss you if you were gone? When we talk to our friends, what do we tell them? And yeah, it helps to develop a groundbreaking, world changing technology.

Seth Godin 00:07:08  And then it helps to, you know, generate billions of dollars. But you can have a brand without those two things. Fact is, when people tune in to this show, they haven't heard our conversation because we're just having it for the first time about this. But they have expectations. What does this remind me of? What am I looking forward to? That's your brand. Not that great little autograph with the J. And the star of your brand is my expectations for what I expect from the next time we interact.

Jasmine Star 00:07:41  Might I say, and I can't tell. This is just wizardry. On another level, the fact that you've made very specific references to doing your homework is a definition and an extension of the Seth Godin brand. Seth Godin, I believe I've been made to feel, and this is important for fact or not fact. How do I feel? I've been made to feel that this is not a book tour. I've been made to feel that this is going to be a customized conversation that's going to serve your audience, even making a reference to the J and star little asterisk logo that it is.

Jasmine Star 00:08:08  And so as we talk about that, I always want to anchor anytime I have a marketing conversation deeply rooted in marketing works far better when it's rooted in brand. And so thank you for your brand. Thank you for sharing that story. And then as we sit here and we talk about the extension that is the Seth Godin brand, I want to use you as a case study. So the book focuses on systems and strategies. I was definitely more attuned to the strategies because I love it and they deeply challenge me. So when you look at this as a marketer, you've written so many books. And so I have like a two part question. First question is what did the strategy look like? And I'm not going to ask for the first book because any others first book is always like this. Like my first child is out in the world. I don't know how it works. Let's go to book number three. Right. Kind of like all right, I kind of got the game. The strategy for marketing book number three.

Jasmine Star 00:08:53  The strategy for marketing, your second most recent book and the strategy for marketing your current book. What I want to know is how are they different, what has changed, and how does your strategy change along with the times?

Seth Godin 00:09:07  Well, I want to clarify just one thing. I never liked doing homework, and I still don't. Spending time figuring out just how interesting you are is not homework. That is a privilege. And if I treated it like homework, it wouldn't have been fun. So that's the first thing I'll say. What we need to begin with is understand that every important brand, from Patagonia to Saddleback to Apple to a local bakery, does not become an important brand because they spend a lot of money on advertising. They become an important brand because other people talk about it, and this matters the most in books Because the book industry is fundamentally broken. It will never be fixed, but no book publisher has a clue how to get the word out. Their job is to sell the first bunch of copies, and then the book sells the rest.

Seth Godin 00:10:02  The way the book sells itself is someone who reads it. Can't go to bed until they tell somebody else about it. Why would they do that? Because it increases their connection, their status, and helps them get to where they want to go. So my first real bestseller was called Permission Marketing. And the strategy that I used to bring it to the world is what the book is about. I said, if you send an email to free at permission com, I'll send you a quarter of the book, no questions asked instantly. I was the first person who ever did that. Millions of people sent me an email because other people told people to send an email. Like a magic trick. And some of those people ended up buying the book. Then I did a couple other books that are relevant to this conversation, and then I did Purple Cow and Purple Cow is about how do you make an idea spread? How do you make an idea worth talking about? And I'd been kicked out of the book industry because the book before that, which had been about Charles Darwin, didn't sell very well.

Seth Godin 00:11:08  So I had no publisher, so I published it myself, just 5010 thousand copies, and it came in a milk carton. I usually have a milk carton right here, but I don't know if someone moved it. So if you bought the book, it didn't come in an envelope. It came in a milk carton. And a lot of people who got it put it on their desk. They didn't put it on their desk because they wanted to help me. They put on their desk because if their boss or their co-worker said, what's that? They could talk about the fact that their dream was to make a remarkable product. And so I helped them by giving them something to talk about. him and fast forward to a bunch of other books. What we really do is we build scaffolding. Scaffolding helps someone who's a little into it become more into it. Someone who feels like a novice become more of an expert than when we offer people scaffolding. They can learn something and then go on to the next thing.

Seth Godin 00:12:08  So if we're going to think about Apple, when Steve Jobs came out with the iPod, it had white headphones. Now, if you're at the gym and you're working out the devices in your pocket, no one can see it. But because you're the only company that makes white headphones. People at the gym who were thinking about getting a headset, an MP3 player, would see that all the cool people are the ones with the white headphones. So they gave the people who sought status a flag that they could wave that would help them gain what they're looking for by telling other people about this new device. And so even though there were MP3 players that were much cheaper, the iPod won because it stood for something.

Jasmine Star 00:12:57  So when you look at this in the context of, let's say, the milk carton, and this most likely predates, if I'm doing my math right, the big push of influencer marketing. So had you send out a proverbial carton now, you weren't just having somebody put it on a desk to talk about it.

Jasmine Star 00:13:13  You were having them take a photo and share it to their networks. So when you look at like the book launch through those terms, how are you strategically thinking about getting people to talk about the book?

Seth Godin 00:13:22  Okay, so then anybody who has gained traction has to make a choice, which is are you looking for new people or are you serving the people you already have?

Jasmine Star 00:13:33  Oh, it's so good. Oh, it's so good. It's so good. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts. It's so good.

Seth Godin 00:13:39  Right.

Seth Godin 00:13:39  Are you trying to get the word out. I'm not trying to get the word out.

Jasmine Star 00:13:42  I just want you know you made it. You made it when you said people are going to talk for me and they're going to talk about it.

Seth Godin 00:13:48  That's not what I said.

Jasmine Star 00:13:49  I know, I know, I know, but this is what this, you know, it's funny. It's what you say. And then what I hear and what I hear is this guy's got it like that.

Jasmine Star 00:13:56  This guy's gotta like that, I know, so say it again. Say it again. You're right, you're right.

Seth Godin 00:14:01  So let me be very clear. So I am super fortunate. I'm fortunate in where I was born and how I was born, and what I look like in that the benefit of the doubt I've gotten in so many ways. And I was also fortunate because I started one of the first internet companies. So I'm not writing a book because I need to sell for more copies to pay the mortgage, writing a book to make a difference. And there was a fork in the road about 15 years ago. And it's, look, if you want to get the word out, you got to go on Twitter. You got to do provocative things. You got to do this transparency, authenticity, have a fight with people thing. You got to do all the stuff that influencers did. If you want to be the next Kardashian, get the word out. Get the word out. And I said, but when I look at their work, that's not work I would be proud of.

Seth Godin 00:14:52  And I don't want to be more popular. I want to be more useful. And the way to be more useful to say I'm not looking for anybody other than the people I have. If I can make a difference for them, it'll take care of itself or it won't. But I'm not keeping track of that. I'm keeping track of did I change the person in the smallest viable audience? The person who cares? And one of the places I learned that was in my first job. I did a series of science fiction adventure games Michael Crichton with Ray Bradbury, with Arthur C Clarke. I was 23 years old and the games are fantastic and the team did a great job. And so we were trying to find people who weren't into computer games and weren't into science fiction, who would give it a try, and we wasted a lot of time and money doing that. And then I said, why don't we just sell it to people who are into science fiction and into computer games? It's for them. It's not for anybody else.

Seth Godin 00:15:54  And because we changed them, they told other people. But it wasn't a gimmick on our part. We just wanted them. That's enough.

Jasmine Star 00:16:04  Speaking of that, it's like you teed me up because you just mentioned a game. And then about seven minutes ago, you mentioned that you don't like doing homework. And so getting Tommy wasn't homework. It was a privilege. And there is section 28. There are games in every strategy. And this one, if I may just read a tiny bit. Here are a few things about games that are generally true. You don't have to enjoy the game for it to be a game. You're playing a game whether you realize it or not, and seeing the game helps you play better. The outcome of the game has little to do with how much you want to win. Some games are easy to quit. Other games are forever. No game stays the same for long. Because playing the game changes the game. There were a lot of other things about the game itself, and Simon Sinek said it best is when you're in business, it's an infinite game and I just think that I sat and I actually I was reading an early copy of the book on a PDF on my laptop, and I realized that I can access the PDF on my phone as well.

Jasmine Star 00:17:07  So I started taking just screenshot and screenshot and screenshot. So this one right here. And it was really like a calling a project a game gives us the chance to depersonalize our work. And I just felt probably in the last couple of years, the work became highly personal and I realized that too much was hinging on it. So reading this empowered me to look at so many things. I'm like, it's a game. I don't have homework I can't win, this is a game and I want to play the game. So people are talking and when they hear this like rousing call to arms, I too want to play. And then when they look at marketing and they look at the daily task that they have to do, and it feels heavy and content is here. What advice do you have for somebody to look at this? And how might we start looking at this like a game?

Seth Godin 00:17:51  Well of course, thank you for the kind words. I haven't talked to many people who have read the book closely, and it means a lot to me.

Seth Godin 00:17:57  A game is simple. It's multiple players, rules, outcomes that when we're in a situation where we have to make a decision, we want to Taylor Swift tickets. That's a game, right? That it's not a matter of life or death, but a strategy will help you get tickets better than somebody else. When we think about marketing, we tend to default to average stuff for average people, which is a race to the bottom. Simon says follow the leader. The rest of that. Let's think about the Supreme T-shirt company. So here's a t shirt that costs $80 that you could buy one just like it for 12. Here's a store with a line of 75 people out the door waiting to buy one. Clearly, they're playing a game. They know they could lower the price of the t shirt. They know they could hire more clerks. They know they could be in the t shirt business. They're not in the t shirt business. There's a game where the souvenir is, you get a t shirt.

Seth Godin 00:18:55  And in our privileged world, most people who are playing to have enough food, they have a roof over their head. So they're looking for a way to play. And the game can be deadly serious. You know, the fact is that a relative who needed a kidney and there is, I don't know, a dozen districts around the country, each with its own waiting list for a kidney donation. And if you move from Denver to Buffalo or Buffalo to Denver, you might move up the list. Well, it's life or death, but it's still a game because allocating our resources to engage in a system where we might get where we want Is easier to understand and play if we don't have to make everything authentic and personal. Where people actually want is consistency and transparency that if someone says, hey Jasmine, I hated your podcast. They're not saying I hate you. They're saying the role you play when you do your podcast is not a role that I want to engage with. You're like, great, fine.

Seth Godin 00:20:05  That's fine. You didn't like death of a salesman either, I get it, but that doesn't mean it's a bad play. It just means you didn't like what was on offer. It's game.

Jasmine Star 00:20:14  So how does one gamify something that they don't like, but feel like they need? Many times, what people feel or say is the cost of running a business is to have marketing, and they don't like it. How might they gamify it?

Seth Godin 00:20:27  Well, they don't like hustling people, but they love marketing because marketing is the human act of telling a story to people who want to hear it and doing it in a way that they tell the others about building a reputation for what you stand for. So if you go to a hotel for breakfast and you order herbal tea, an herbal tea bag costs the hotel $0.08. Everything that happens between the $0.08 that cost them to buy the teabag, and the $4 you paid for that cup of tea is marketing. Does that cup of tea feel special, or are they simply in the tea delivery business? Did a human being engage with you at 8:00 in the morning in a strange town, to make you feel welcome? Did you leave that place feeling better than when you got there? These are all generous acts that are fun, but if all you're doing is like pulling a crank over and over again.

Seth Godin 00:21:23  Yeah, I could see why you don't like that. But that's not marketing.

Jasmine Star 00:21:27  So when we think about this, it's storytelling and we think about this. This is strategy and we think about this is people sharing a piece of value. What they like, they help you sell the book. When you look back at your career, is there a book that rises to the top of saying, this was a book that a lot of people spoke about in a very different way?

Seth Godin 00:21:47  Well, there are a bunch of books that changed my life. But the book of mine, yes, that was the transformation was Purple Cow. And I will tell you, the day that it happened, I got an email about three months after the book comes out and a guy says, I want to tell you a story. I work at a company with Matrix Management, which means I have two bosses, and one of the bosses comes to me and says, the big boss is really excited. We're going to have to think hard about this purple cow thing, get your ideas together.

Seth Godin 00:22:17  And the next day the other boss said to him, are you aware of this whole purple cow phenomenon, blah blah blah. So this guy who's writing to me says he's an eager beaver. He goes and reads the book and he goes back to the first boss with some ideas, and he says, I got these ideas from the book. And the guy says, there's a book. That's how I knew it works, because I am not in the business of selling books. It's fine if someone doesn't buy my book, but if they have a conversation about the idea, that's why I wrote it.

Jasmine Star 00:22:49  Oh so good. Okay, they have a conversation. We know there is an ROI on a conversation, but is that conversation measurable? If so, like, how have you been able to measure outside of like these people telling you their story is do you have a way of a pulse? Like, I think that's very encouraging for people to say, I might not have like an ROI, but I could feel it.

Jasmine Star 00:23:05  I can sense it. What should we be looking for?

Seth Godin 00:23:07  So do you know what phrenology was? No, it was a very big deal. Bigger than astrology in the late 1800s, early 1900s. And they would read the bumps on people's heads and use it to tell what their character was like. And it was sort of misogynistic and racist, but it was also very, very common. If you type it into Google Images, you'll see these pictures, you'll recognize them, okay? And we can laugh at phrenology because it's a false proxy. Having a bump right here does not mean you are creative. It's a mistake to think that this bump has anything to do with creativity. Well, let me tell you something. Getting 10 million views on TikTok is a measure of only one thing. Did you get 10 million views on TikTok? That we measure false proxies all the time. And part of the work is to willfully ignore them. Do not read your reviews on Amazon. Do not count how many YouTube views you got.

Seth Godin 00:24:10  It does not matter. It is a trap. Your job is not to make YouTube happy. Your job is to do your job, which is to change the people who trust you. So I have no hard metrics on purpose because if there were some, yeah, I'd pay attention, but there aren't any. And I refuse to waste my time looking for false proxies.

Jasmine Star 00:24:33  Oh, I love this so much. I love this so much. Okay, so speaking of false promises. Speaking of really not wanting the marketing that we do to be heavy, we're focusing on story and transformation and empowering. And one of the things that you had said was the hard work of developing a better, more resilient strategy begins with letting go of the one you might be holding onto right now. Simplify, then add lightness. Can we dive in? I mean, there's a whole book on this, but for somebody who's just listening and her desire is to create impact, how do we do this?

Seth Godin 00:25:05  So most people don't know this, but when AT&T developed the telephone Western Union dominated communications, they did all the telegrams.

Seth Godin 00:25:15  They had the chance to buy AT&T and they refused and instead decided to make better telegrams. And that happens all the time. There are all these big car companies that are saying, that electric thing probably isn't going to happen. We'll just make some more pickup trucks. We protect what we think we do. Instead of getting to the first principles of what we actually do. And so, you know, I am arrogant in that I still blog instead of putting my content into something that people want to consume. Today I have the privilege of doing that, but most people don't. What we have to do instead is say, how do I go to where people are? To offer them a path to get to where they want to go in a way that I am proud of. And so we're not chasing the trend we're leading, but we understand that the world changes. And when a change agent arises, there's an opportunity. So you might want AI to go away. AI is not going to go away.

Seth Godin 00:26:28  Savannah is not going to go away. What are you going to do about it?

Jasmine Star 00:26:30  That's right.

Seth Godin 00:26:31  How are you going to bring your desire for change to this new tool so that you can amplify your work, as opposed to having somebody else do it for you?

Jasmine Star 00:26:44  Are there any key indications of when it's time to let go? I mean, obviously we look back with rose tinted glasses or 2020 vision and we say, oh, Western Union and AT&T and electric cars. Are there common trends that we're saying is just like, okay, now is the time.

Seth Godin 00:26:57  So there's an expression that I would love to teach people that I say out loud at least twice a day, which is this might not work.

Jasmine Star 00:27:07  This might not.

Seth Godin 00:27:08  Work. If you can say before you do something, this might not work. It makes it easier to do it. And if you're not doing things that might not work well, you might as well go get a job at an insurance agency because it's steady work. But if you're already committed to this idea of making things better.

Seth Godin 00:27:31  We have to believe it's okay to do things that might not work. And the thing about technology is we often switch too late, not too soon. That selfish mom type technologies like NFTs. I think we can avoid those, but something that's going to be generous that is not just for you, but to open the door for somebody else. Turn in a light for somebody else. It's probably better to go too soon.

Jasmine Star 00:28:00  So when we talk about embracing things, essentially we have to start thinking about things that would impact us or put us out of business. And I get that. And yet, I find myself being so afraid to let go of one thing, to embrace another. And I think that that's deep mindset. And so when I ask, what are the things that she's looking for, you say, oh, this might not work. Deep mindset can you share with us? And it might be a little personal, or maybe we don't have to keep it personal, but when's the last time you said something? This might not work.

Jasmine Star 00:28:31  And you were right. It didn't.

Seth Godin 00:28:33  Work this.

Jasmine Star 00:28:34  Morning. Oh, okay.

Seth Godin 00:28:36  Tell me my new book comes. We can talk about that part of the launch strategy, but I made a collectible chocolate bar with the folks in Missouri at Asking Aussie Chocolate. And their chocolate is magnificent. The they're magnificent humans. And I spent a month designing the packaging, ordering the packaging, coordinating the packaging, and the packaging. Arrived at the plant today. They called and said the paper is too thin. Oh yeah, and we're gonna have to fix it. And if I had put in an extra three weeks to ensure that the paper wasn't too thin, it would have been fine, but then we would have missed all of our windows. That my job as a pioneer is to do stuff that might not work. And sometimes I'm right and sometimes I'm not right. But it's not fatal because I never do a project that's so big it has to work Oh, never go all in. Playing poker. As my friend Simon says, if it's an infinite game, the goal is to play again, not to win.

Seth Godin 00:29:38  And so this approach of being able to be comfortable, you know, I've written 9000 blog posts. Half of them are below average. But I never know till the next day if it was good or not. So I can't filter out the bad one because I don't know. And because there's going to be a new blog post every day, it's pretty light. If I have a clunker, I'm like, I have a tomorrow is a new one.

Jasmine Star 00:30:05  I heard that you write three blog posts a day. Is that 2 or 3?

Seth Godin 00:30:09  And then the night before I figure out which one goes. So there's there's plenty I want. I used to write at the last minute, but I had a streak and I didn't want to break the streak, so I started to bank them. I think Stephen Wright said this race is a great thing to have if you want to eat a million of something. And the thing about rice is, if one grain of rice is imperfect, it's okay. There's more rice.

Seth Godin 00:30:32  And the same thing is true with blog posts are.

Jasmine Star 00:30:35  The same thing is true with social media posts. The same thing is true for people who are consistent with newsletters. The same thing is true for people who choose to be consistent about many things. Thank you for the reminder. But there's a storyteller in me and every time I ask a question, I just see it. I just see it and I'm like, oh, master storyteller. But what I want to know is the paper is too thin. So now what's the strategy? What are we going to do? Share the tea?

Seth Godin 00:30:59  Well, problems are made to be solved okay. To demonstrate a problem in a situation okay. The situation has no solution. So you just celebrate it. Then we're both thinking, oh well okay, a problem has a solution. And Lauren is working on the solution. Alex either going to be a reprint on a different kind of paper, which will cost money, but money can be replaced or it will be the packaging.

Seth Godin 00:31:26  I made inside a cardboard box. So either way the chocolate will be preserved and beautiful. But that leads to another really big idea. So thank you for reminding me. Anyone who goes to business school has heard the phrase ignore some costs, and most people have no idea what it means, and it's one of the most important pieces of advice you can get if you spent years, difficult years, hard years, expensive years, getting a law degree, or becoming a wedding photographer or anything in between. And then the world changes and you don't like it anymore. The world changes and you don't want to do it anymore. The world changes and it's not fun. You don't have to keep doing it no matter how much it costs you. Because that was the U of yesterday. The U of yesterday did something and gave it to you today as a gift. And like all gifts, you don't have to accept it. You can say Thank you very much, but I don't need this. And so when we look at the job satisfaction of lawyers and dentists in this country, it's terrible because they're all showing up at work defending the decision they made 20 years ago, wasting tomorrow to insist that they were right yesterday.

Seth Godin 00:32:44  And so sunk costs are designed to be ignored. So here we have a pile of 5000 chocolate wrappers. But that's a gift. We we. It's free. Here it is from yesterday. And so if we don't use it, we don't use it. But we shouldn't wreck the project just to defend the fact that we have these.

Jasmine Star 00:33:04  Not at all. And I'm so interested to see what happens. I'm so interested to see if it's reprinted. I'm so interested to see if it sits on the inside of the box. I'm so interested to see if on the backside of the paper you say this was a mistake, but this is strategy. Give us a reason to talk, Seth. Sir, I just love it. See, it's like I think of these things and I'm like, oh, everything's happening for you. This is a win. You are the literary version of Willy Wonka. People are going to be opening their golden tickets. It's all everything's happening for you. This is amazing.

Seth Godin 00:33:33  Okay, so you're very kind.

Seth Godin 00:33:35  There is a golden ticket, by the way. There's the trading card inside, and there's 54 different trading cards. So there's 100 of each and 100 of them are Golden ticket.

Jasmine Star 00:33:44  And what is the golden ticket get you?

Seth Godin 00:33:46  It takes you to a secret website. And on the website are instructions about what you get and how you get it.

Jasmine Star 00:33:53  Here's the thing I grew up saying things like, but I want.

Jasmine Star 00:33:56  An input loompa, daddy, and I want it now.

Jasmine Star 00:33:59  I please know that I am going to be Mike. And then he says, Veruca.

Jasmine Star 00:34:03  Darling, sweetheart.

Seth Godin 00:34:05  Are you are you Veruca Salt?

Jasmine Star 00:34:07  I unfortunately, I am. Unfortunately, there's a small part of me that remains hidden, but deep down I want the golden ticket, I really do. I wish I was Charlie Bucket, but deep down I'm a girl. My apologies in advance. So we're probably going to edit that part out. No, we're just not. Okay. So I just want to explain one thing.

Jasmine Star 00:34:24  There was a series of questions that I really loved and the questions around questions that lead to strategy. So people are listening and they might do a self-assessment and say, maybe I'm not the most strategic person, but I think this is a really great place to end because it'll get the mind going and ideating. So I'm going to read a couple of the questions. Maybe we jam here for a second. Okay. So a couple other questions in regards to strategy. What change do I seek to make with this project? Right. What is my strategy to make the change happen? Can I articulate it clearly? A couple more questions okay, great.

Seth Godin 00:35:01  Please, please a trap for a lot of big company people and influencers, because what they do is they come up with some highfalutin mission statement filled with vague terms, right, to empower people to live their best version of a higher self, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. No, that's not what we're talking about. What we're talking about is the change that a cheap chocolate bar seeks to make is to give a kid for 12 seconds, maybe four seconds, the joy of having something that's theirs that they opened up.

Seth Godin 00:35:41  That's sweet. Yeah, they're offering them status and affiliation and a fun little shot of dopamine for three seconds. That's what they do for a living. And multiply that by Halloween, which is. And what they say to the homeowner is, this is a cheap way to keep people from egging your house, or this is the way for you to feel more generous than your parents were or whatever, right? That's what they offer. So when we think about that now, we have a chance to add the stuff to it that makes it so. If you've ever opened Dasani water, it goes, it's not carbonated. They spent more than $1 million to build the machinery that would make it release that little bit of gas when you open it. Why did they do that? Because the change they seek to make is to make someone feel like they have a little bit of luxury in their hand, and that the dollar they paid was worth it for the purity. And, you know, the virginity of opening this thing like that.

Seth Godin 00:36:46  That is what they built in. That's the story with no words that's in that bottle. And whatever we do, if it's worth doing, it's going to change somebody. We should be very clear about the change we seek to make.

Jasmine Star 00:37:03  I love that, and in the book, you also extended the story with chocolate, with cocoa bean farmers and creating the distinction between cheap chocolate and quality chocolate and how there is a market for quality chocolate. And we, the storytellers, the innovators, the people who care about that stuff need to step up and do these things. And that's actually what helps you stick out. And so it doesn't become a laborious it becomes a joy to market your business. And it has been a joy. Truly, truly. I woke up this morning, I was excited, I was so nervous to have this conversation and you have made it a pure, pure joy. I'm going to close with a story that I have not forget. I've heard it years ago and we're speaking of Simon Sinek, as if he's like a shadow on this podcast.

Jasmine Star 00:37:42  But he talked about a time where as a story where you speaking of being very good friend and being wildly empathetic, he went to your house begrudgingly and he said, oh, he had a terrible Thanksgiving. And it was just it was too fancy for him. And he just wanted a just a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. And you, being a vegetarian, heard this and thought, oh, what a shame he didn't have a Thanksgiving. And then months later, he sees you visit your apartment and you take the time to make them a Thanksgiving meal as a vegetarian turkey, perhaps some gravy. You did that because of joy, because of friendship, because of empathy. But I also secretly think what a good story it makes to commemorate a friendship. So this is me and you building out new stories. I look forward to the next adventure version book and when our paths are able to cross again, I look forward to having just this be one of many stories. Thank you, Seth Godin. Where do people go? I want people to enjoy this book as much as I did.

Jasmine Star 00:38:35  You could read a tiny bit before you go to bed each night. It's that good.

Seth Godin 00:38:39  Well, if they're named Jasmine, they should come to my house, I will. I'm a vegetarian.

Jasmine Star 00:38:44  Though, so.

Jasmine Star 00:38:45  You make me a.

Jasmine Star 00:38:46  Tofurky.

Seth Godin 00:38:46  I didn't think I was going to make you a turkey. I'm just saying you would tell me and we would make you dinner. Everything I know about the book is that Seth's blog slash t I s so my blog is at Seth stop blog. It's all free. Have fun. And it's just that blog. This will tell you all about the book.

Jasmine Star 00:39:04  Well be sure to link it in the show notes. I hope you have a beautiful day. Ladies, gentlemen, thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show. And thank you, Seth Godin for just being a strategic thinker, leader, and world changer. I appreciate you.

Seth Godin 00:39:16  Oh, you're the best. Thanks for having me.