TCC Podcast #375: The Status Quo is Risky with Seth Godin

For the 375th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, we brought back Seth Godin. But maybe not quite the way you think. We talked to Seth more than five years ago about creating art, freelancing, and the story you create for yourself. It's such a great discussion, but because it happened so long ago, not very many listeners find it. So for our very first throwback episode, we've pulled this great interview out of the vault and are sharing it again... with a few new thoughts at the end. Even if you heard this interview the first time we ran it, it's worth another listen. Click the play button below, or scroll down for a full transcript. Stuff to check out: This is Marketing by Seth Godin The Copywriter Club Facebook Group The Copywriter Accelerator Full Transcript: Rob Marsh: A little over 5 years ago, as we were approaching our 100th episode of The Copywriter Club Podcast, Kira and I were trying to think of who would be an amazing guest for the 100th episode of the show. There are some amazing—even famous—copywriters who came to mind. It’s too bad David Ogilvy wasn’t alive. He definitely would have made the cut. But this show is about more than copywriting. It’s about marketing and showing up and making a difference in the world. And when we added those considerations to the list, one obvious choice stood out. Seth Godin. You know Seth. He’s been a vocal advocate for making art or as Steve Jobs once said, making a dent in the universe. Much of Seth’s career, certainly for the last decade, has been about encouraging people to make their art. So I reached out to Seth and asked him if he would be our 100th guest. And I think it was about 20 minutes later, I got a reply back. I still have it, in fact, let me just read what he said… he wrote… I can happily do this, but my publisher asked me to not have any new podcast interviews until November. Can we record it soon, but have it come out then? That timing meant that Seth wouldn’t be our 100th guest, but we weren’t about to say no. And in fact, I think the timing actually worked in our favor. As you can imagine, Seth appeared on many podcasts around the same time ours went live—all to promote his new book. But because we recorded 5 months earlier, we didn’t have the book, so our interview was very different from all the others that went live at the same time. It’s been 5 years since we recorded this interview with Seth, but I have to tell you I go back and listen to it more than any other episode. Seth’s advice on making art, owning the work we do, doing the difficult emotional work, building spec projects, and what happens when we don’t do those things is even more important today than if was when we recorded this interview more than 5 years ago. Now… this is where I would usually mention the copywriter underground. I’m not going to do that today because we wanted to give you something as a thank you for being a regular listener to the show. Just after the new year, we launch the copywriter accelerator. It’s not a course. It’s an 8 part business building program designed to help you build a six-figure business that works for you. I’m not going to tell you all the things it includes here. You can find that out at thecopywriteraccelerator.com. But I will share an exclusive code only available to you as a podcast listener. This is the only place we’re sharing it. If you go to the copywriter accelerator.com and enter the code: POD200, you’ll save $200 off the price of the program. That’s POD200 at the copywriter accelerator .com. And you can find far more details about what the program includes there. Check it out. And if it’s a fit, join with the code: POD200. Okay, now we hope you enjoy this incredible interview with Seth Godin. Kira Hug:  Seth, welcome. Rob Marsh:  Hey, Seth. Seth Godin:  Thanks. Great to talk to you guys. Kira Hug:  We’re very excited and honored that you’re a part of our show. Before we start recording, we just shared with you that you’ve been such a big influence in our careers and also in creating The Copywriter Club. So my palms are sweaty and I am thrilled that you’re here. Seth Godin: All right. Well, I’ll do my best. That’s a pretty high expectation, but we’ll see what happens. Rob Marsh:  You’re going to deliver. We feel good about this, so. Kira Hug:  So, to kick this off, you talk about becoming a category of one on your own podcast, and you mentioned doing quirky work. That really stood out to me. What does that mean and how can freelancers do that? Seth Godin: Well, there’s two kinds of freelancers. There are freelancers who seek to have a job without a boss, that’s most freelancers. And then there’s freelancers who actually make a living, make an impact, bend the curve. It’s fun to talk about being the second kind, but there’s a cost to it. I think distinguishing between the two is really important. More than ever because there are laptops, because there’s an internet. More than ever people feel like they can make a living on their own in the world. That plenty of people who are professional copywriters used to be on the client side and then they go, ‘Whoa, I just paid that person a thousand dollars if I only did that 60 times a year, I could make a living.’ And so off they go. Their motto is ‘You can hire anyone and I’m anyone.’ The problem with that motto is it’s based on a mindset of scarcity. A scarcity of information, a scarcity of choice, the scarcity that comes from geography. And in my little town, there’s only one florist. So yeah, if you want flowers you have to buy it from the florist, but it’s not true for copywriters. There’s no scarcity. The alternative is to do the scary work of intentionally not being in the middle, intentionally not saying to the client, ‘What would you like? I’m happy to do it for you.’ Because if that’s your approach, then they’ll just find someone cheaper than you. Whereas the alternative is, ‘No, this is my work. This is how I do my work. I’m the one and only at this work and if you want this work, that’s what you get from me.’ That’s different. It’s a whole different way of being in the marketplace. Rob Marsh:  Can we talk a little bit about that other kind of freelancer too? Because I think it’s really important to realize that when we’re that kind of freelancer that doesn’t want a boss, a lot of times we actually end up creating a job with the worst boss of all, and that is ourselves. Seth Godin: Exactly. That most freelancers have an enemy inside and this is the person who not only relentlessly criticizes them, their work ethic, their approach, their quality of their work, but then when it’s time to do the difficult emotional labor of building a career, it says, ‘Nah, we worked really hard today. Let’s just go out for drinks.’ So on one hand, the boss is pushing you too hard and bringing shame along, and on the other hand, the boss isn’t pushing you hard enough and making it easy to hide. Rob Marsh: So, how do we make ourselves then that second kind of freelancer? What are the things that we need to do, really step into that role? Seth Godin: Well, I think it begins by acknowledging that you’re not very good at what you do right now. You’re at the 80% level. That there are plenty of people who do what you do, and many of them are faster and cheaper and more experienced than you. That’s just sheer math. It’s gotta be true. So, when I started out as book packager, I had a Mac. I knew sort of how to set type. I had an MBA from some fancy business school. I said, ‘I’m ready to go.’ But I wasn’t good at it for seven more years. But if you are self-satisfied, and say, ‘Well, why are they getting the gigs and I’m not? Life isn’t fair.’ Then you’re not going to be able to sharpen your knife and hone your skills to admit that, in fact, you could be a lot better at this. That’s the first thing. But the second thing is, you have to say no a lot. You will become the sum of your clients. You can define a freelancer’s life by who their clients are. When you have great clients, they push you to do better work, which gets you even better clients and they pay a lot because they’re happy to, because it’s worth it. When you have lousy clients, they’re in a hurry. They don’t push you at all except on price, and the kind of work they want you to do, doesn’t get you more clients because it’s mediocre. So you have to be able to say to lousy clients, ‘Sorry, I’d love your money, but I don’t want to work for you because you’re a lousy client.’ And then you have to use your downtime to work on spec to earn the attention of great clients. Kira Hug:  Can you talk a little bit more about that, the downtime working on spec to get the better clients because I feel like that’s where a lot of copywriters in our club get stuck? Seth Godin: Well, in the old days, in order to be a copywriter, you needed a bag of gold because you needed to buy a list and buy stamps, so it would be really hard. For example, to effectively prove to L.L. Bean that you could write catalog copy and form letters that would make L.L. Bean’s sales go up because it would’ve cost you tens of thousands of dollars to run that test on your own. But today, you could build a website and have that website attract people and connect people and earn people’s attention until you had 5,000 people in the fly fishing club. Once you earned the attention of 5,000 people in the fly fishing club, you’re not going to have any trouble at all getting great clients in the fly fishing industry because all by yourself for free, you earned the attention of 5,000 high value individuals. That’s the kind of spec work I’m talking about. Or if you don’t want to view it as an online club, find a charity you believe in, show up, and raise them $10 million dollars. After you’ve raised them $10 million for free,