Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: In this episode, we interview one of the preeminent marketers and strategists in the entire world, Seth Godin.
[00:00:07] Speaker B: Let's get started from New Money New Problems. It's the New Money New Problems, um, podcast. A show for successful professionals searching for the tools they need to navigate financial opportunities and obstacles they've never seen.
Negotiating compensation. Purchasing your first investment property. Helping your family with money. The highs and lows of entrepreneurship. New Money brings new problems that require new solutions. Join us as we work through them together.
I'm Brenton Harrison, and this is the New Money New Problems podcast.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Hello, my name is Brenton Harrison of New Money New Problems and your host for the New Money New Problems podcast. On this week's episode, we have the extreme high honor of interviewing someone who I was introduced to by a friend, uh, Kevin Jennings, years ago, uh, from his book Purple Cow. And he has written far more than one book. He has won far more than one award. Uh, he is world renowned as a marketer and strategist, and his name is Seth Godin. So, Seth, welcome to the New Money New Problems podcast.
[00:01:17] Speaker C: Boom. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure.
[00:01:20] Speaker A: Absolutely. We were, uh, if you don't mind me sharing, we were introduced by Eva Ford and Avileen Reed. I wanted to make sure on this episode that I gave them my thanks as well. So I appreciate you being here. Uh, in the first half of the episode. I would love to kind of do some background for our audience. I'm sure some of them have, have heard of you and your work. Um, but if you had to give a 60 second introduction as to how you came to this place in life, what would that 60 second be?
[00:01:52] Speaker C: I would spend 30 seconds asking somebody what they were up to, and then I would just talk about how lucky I'd been and, uh, sometimes foolishly persisting. Uh, I started one of the first Internet companies. Uh, I have been blogging for 10,000 blog posts in a row. And mostly I'm a teacher. I try to find places where people are held back by systems and help them see how the system works so they can get to where they're going.
[00:02:21] Speaker A: That, that desire to break down systems and analyze them, it goes across all of your work, from Purple Cow to this is marketing, to this is, uh, strategy. Is there anything in your childhood or early experiences in your career that put you in a position where you said, you know, instead of being a part of this, I want to take a step outside of it and start to see why this works the way it does.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: You Know, it's interesting because plenty of people have had backgrounds, uh, better than mine, worse than mine, even people in my same house.
I, uh, think that we are definitely the product of the cards that we start with, but it's also about what story do we want to tell ourselves? And the story I've been telling myself from a really young age is, uh, there's a question to be asked. How did I get into this spot, and what are my options?
And I just keep asking myself those questions. A lot of people have been indoctrinated into accepting the situation as it is without understanding how it came to be or what the situation might be. So if you're in 10th grade and there's all this pressure on you to get an A, well, but, uh, why. Why is getting an A worth the extra effort to get that A? Who needs you to get an A, and for what reason? Are you there to learn something, or are you there to get a grade? And so if you keep asking yourself these questions about who's behind this and what do they want versus what do I want, it makes it easier to make better decisions.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: There is a large group of our audience where, by no choice of their own, they're in systems that are not really built for them to succeed or come in with any, like, prior knowledge. You know, they are in a corporate environment, and they did not have a parent who was also in that environment to bounce questions off of. Uh, but they still have the responsibility of trying to navigate it. Um, you have books like Linchpin, where you talk about how to make yourself indispensable. So there are times when, to your point, you have the ability to look and say, why is it so important that I get an A? But what happens when it's just like, well, I actually do have to get an A. I'm in the system. It requires it. What happens then?
[00:04:45] Speaker C: Right, well, so you're bringing up a couple really important points. The first one, I would say, is thanks to podcasts like yours, or thanks to systems like Claude, AI or Perplexity, you can ask these questions. Now, you can ask questions in the privacy of your own home, but you might not want to ask the question, and someone brainwashed you to not want to ask. That's my point, is you need to know and then decide you're not going to do anything about it, Right? So if I get pulled over by a cop in New York City, I'm not going to have an argument with them, because there's a system, and the system is way more powerful than me in that setting. I just. It's just like no way for me to win a fight in that setting. The same thing is true if you're in debt, if you've got a job where you don't get paid very well, if you've got bills to pay. It may very well be that pleasing your jerk of a boss is the best option.
But we need to spend the time to understand what our options are. What does the system want from us? And what have we been? Brainwashed? So, a simple example, since we're talking about money, how much should a wedding cost?
And the answer is exactly as much as your best friend, but a little more, right, that there's no absolute law about how much you're supposed to spend to get married. But people spend way more than they should because they're in a system, the wedding industrial complex, that pushes them to fit in.
You talked in a previous podcast about loud budgeting and Rachel and other people who have done work on that. Well, why is it awkward to say to people, I'm saving, I can't go out for brunch today? Uh, that's built into the system to make that awkward. Because if it wasn't, people would talk about it. What we're looking to do is get very clear about what do we need, what do we want this work we're doing, who's it for? What's it for? Are we trying to do something that cannot be done, or are we trying to do something that's simply uncomfortable? And if it's uncomfortable, it's probably uncomfortable because there's a system that doesn't want us to do it differently. And so, again, back to the book linchpin. If you work at a job, let's say as a barista, and the system keeps pushing you to be an obedient cog in the system, it will be that way forever. Or you could start showing up at work differently, and that will set you out on a career path. That means that soon you're going to be the manager of that store. You're not going to be become the manager of that store because you show up the way everybody else shows up. You're going to be the manager because you're doing something different with you.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: In this, uh, strategy, when you said the phrase, you know how you could show up for work differently, and in your latest book, this is strategy, you mentioned that. And I don't want to mischaracterize, so if I do, correct me, you mentioned that you are less concerned about someone working in their passion as you are about them being passionate about what they do.
[00:07:53] Speaker C: Right.
[00:07:54] Speaker A: I have spoken to clients who are evaluating job opportunities and they're saying, I'm not really passionate about this. And my response may be, okay, well, you know, sometimes that's important. But does it facilitate you pursuing your passions?
[00:08:09] Speaker C: Mhm.
[00:08:09] Speaker A: What is the difference between passionate about what you do?
Explain that.
[00:08:15] Speaker C: Sure. So, you know, some of the richest people in the world work 90 hours a week on Wall Street.
Now that's a ridiculous hobby to go and deal with spreadsheets and high pressure situations. Why are they showing up on a regular basis to do it? Because they got passionate about that game. I could never do it. I would happily pay money not to do it. But they've decided that becoming passionate about winning this weird game between other people, it involves emails and spreadsheets. That's their passion. They like the prizes, they like the stress, they like the way other people look at them when they say what they do. So if you love music, being in the music business is a really bad idea because the music business is about lawyers and meetings and filing and agreements and spending all night in a bus. It is not about you performing music. That's called music, not the music business.
So go find a thing that you can be passionate about that pays you fairly for the effort you're putting into it, as opposed to doing your hobby and hoping you get paid for it.
[00:09:31] Speaker A: When we talk to our clients, there is often a lot of, I won't call it shame, um, but a, uh, confusion as to why I'm looking at all these things people are supposed to be doing financially, and I'm not doing those right. The person who sits in the cubicle or the office next to me, um, is able to do this and I'm not able to do it. Or I look online about where I'm supposed to be financially and I'm not there. Um, of the people that I follow, you seem to be very confident with ignoring what other people are using as a metric.
What gives you that confidence? And what would you say to a person who is really trying to establish something but they can't follow the traditional path?
[00:10:22] Speaker C: I'm not confident. I am bulking myself up and appearing to be confident so I can stick with a path that serves me well. So being an adult is a lot like being in high school, except there's money involved. And so in high school, they make you feel bad that you're not at the table with the cool kids and they make you feel bad that you're not playing varsity this or varsity that. They make you feel bad if you didn't get into a famous college. Well, all of that is another definition of culture, of establishing what is right. What are things like around here? People like us do things like this, that when I walk by a bunch of teenagers who all know the lyrics to some song I've never heard in my life, I feel left out because that's what drives culture forward.
And the same way you learned in high school, just because the cool kids want you to smoke cigarettes doesn't mean you should. Because now you're going to sign up for an, uh, expensive lifetime of addiction and death. There's all these other things in the world. Like, you know what? You're never going to be as superficially as attractive as somebody on TikTok. Okay, that's true. Don't go have plastic surgery. Just stop buying into what they're selling you and surround yourself instead with stories and with feedback loops that push you to become who you want to be, not who the system wants you to be.
And you know, if everyone. I was in the parking lot the other day and this woman said to her friend, great news. I made my last car payment, so I get to buy a new car next week.
Well, no, that's not what that means.
What it means is now you own your car and you get to drive it for free for as long as possible and put the car payments in the bank so that you can have freedom. But you know what the bank and the car company wants you to do? Go buy a new car next week. But don't buy a new car because they want you to. Don't buy a new car because their ads push your friends to push you. Buy a new car when it's the single best way for you to use your savings. And if you have a four year old car that runs great, it's probably not the single best way for you to use your savings.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: You're speaking my language because there is no expense I hate more than a car note.
So I would be remiss if I didn't share a little bit about the person who turned me on to your work. It started with this is Purple Cow. Uh, then it was, I think it's Free prize inside. Um, and his name is Kevin Jennings and he is one of the first people I knew in my life who was just determined to make something happen no matter what. Right at an age where it's just like, why are you vision boarding at 5:30 in the morning? We're 15 years old, like, you know, like everybody else has been up, uh, playing video games.
But when I look at his trajectory, when I look at your trajectory, I would describe you as someone who, just like you've positioned yourself to pursue the things in which you find passion. You've written books on marketing strategy, but you've written books on climate change. You've written books on, like, all these different types of things.
So I am sure, as we talked about passion versus the way you show up to work, how do you, at this point in your career, determine whether something is worth pursuing?
[00:13:56] Speaker C: So let's go back to where you were a, uh, few minutes ago. I think there's a huge difference between the output of what we create and the way we create it. Those are different things. So if someone is a great tennis instructor, and all of a sudden no one on earth wanted to play tennis anymore, I think they could become a great instructor of just about anything. They could become an instructor not just of, you know, a simple game like pickleball, but, but an instructor about how to trade put options on the, uh, Chicago Merc. Because teaching is teaching. Teaching is pedagogy. How do I look someone in the eye and figure out where they're stuck? That's what they're doing. They're not playing tennis. They're teaching.
So for me, marketing isn't something I was born to do.
What I was born to do is a certain kind of teaching that lights me up. I'm also really curious. Those two things are what I dance between over and over again. But I wrote the first book on digital cash, and it was just as interesting for me to write about that and end up owning Zero Bitcoin, by the way, to write about that as it was to write about Purple Cow, because they're just problems that I like to solve. So if you think that you have to do the thing, I, uh, think you might be making a mistake. The thing isn't what you think it is.
It's the process. And there are so many places to do the process. So what it is to find financial independence, as you've taught so beautifully, is only two things. The way you spend money and the way you earn money. And the best way to earn money is to solve a problem for people who have money to spend.
And if you can find a way to find passion in doing that, then you're never going to have to worry about making money.
[00:15:59] Speaker A: What are some of the metrics when you're looking for that problem that you can solve that tell you this? Isn't for me to solve or I don't want to solve this.
[00:16:11] Speaker C: Okay? So I think that there's stories and then there's stories about stories.
Uh, you probably will get burnt out if you are working for someone who doesn't respect you, who abuses you, someone who's spoiled, somebody who doesn't appreciate the work, somebody who is disloyal or dishonest. Those things aren't generative and resilient.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people who might not be your friend, who you can offer a service to if they will pay you fairly.
And this idea that there are seven and a half billion people on earth with a job, and almost all of those jobs got invented in the last 50 years. And almost all of those people are serving somebody, doing something they didn't plan to do when they were little, shows us that, uh, what we have is this market and jobs and projects and freelancing, all in flux, where problems arise and people find a way to solve them.
And you don't have to solve this person's problem, but you have to solve somebody's problem. And I think you could find a way to do that that you're proud of, where you get paid fairly.
[00:17:31] Speaker A: Say that you are, um, the only woman in your department. You are the only black person, you're the only Latina who is trying to advance themselves, and you have all these headwinds against you. You didn't go to the right school, you don't have the right parents or the right pedigree, but you're still trying to advance yourself. I believe the confidence and myself and our firm, when I talk to a client, I say, if you just go earn the money, like, we'll help you figure out what to do with it. But they have to go and earn it. Purple cow, making yourself unique. What do you think a person in a situation like that can do to make themselves pop in a way that allows them to continue to advance?
[00:18:18] Speaker C: Okay, so I have to make a small disclaimer, which is, I've never been in the shoes of somebody who is the victim of persistent, consistent oppression and racism. And it breaks my heart to even say that sentence, that someone has to deal with that. I have been an outsider. I have been somebody who people didn't give the benefit of the doubt to. But it's nothing compared to what my friends have to deal with who are judged just by walking into the room. And so I'll begin by acknowledging just how unfair that is and how so many people were born on the 99 yard line and other people who were born on the one yard line are expected to just catch up. And that just really bothers me.
We have this system where we live now, and then there are choices to be made. And one of those choices is to say, can I become passionate, can I use it as fuel that I'm going to show up in that room and despite the fact that there is so much privilege not awarded to me, I am going to succeed. If you cannot turn that into useful fuel, I'm, um, begging you not to go into that room because life is too short to spend the next 60 years dealing with with that. And the good news is the world is now fluid enough that you can find people who deserve you. You may have to start your own gig, you may have to be a freelancer, you may have to work in a different thing, which none of which is fair. You should have to have that as a choice.
But the fact is don't work for jerks. And if people are seeking to undermine you, actually seeking to undermine you, not your imagination, but actually doing it, you either have to become passionate about proving them wrong, or you got to go somewhere else. And in my life again, without the overhead that some others have to deal with, I have been glad when I walked out of the room because I was spending so much time internally dealing with all the junk that I wasn't being the best version of myself.
And you know, it doesn't just happen inside an insurance office where somebody's the only woman. It happens in a place like Silicon Valley where they look at you funny because you didn't get the right, uh, investor, you didn't do the right, you know, it's status all the way down. Everybody's a turtle, and there's always turtles above you and below you. Being the bottom turtle is no fun.
[00:20:54] Speaker A: Mhm. This is typically a question I would ask of a thought leader at the end of the podcast, but I told you in part two, we're just going to go through this strategy a little bit. So I will ask this. It may seem out of sequence, but what is something that you wished people would ask you more frequently that they don't? Don't ask enough.
[00:21:16] Speaker C: Uh, you know, Brenton, having a blog with 10,000 posts on it and doing a lot of podcasts, I have do not have that problem.
[00:21:25] Speaker A: Fair enough.
[00:21:25] Speaker C: I want to talk about something. I can talk about it.
I, uh, do wish that people would tell themselves the truth more often.
And it starts at a really young age. So I've been Writing about the college industrial complex for a while. And every once in a while I'll reach out to a 17 year old who I know through family, and I'll say, you know, college is coming up. Do you want to talk about this? And we'll talk about the system and the process and how corrupt and broken it is. And I'll just watch their face. And about half the time, they basically want to run out of the room. It's like telling them Santa Claus and the tooth fairy aren't made, aren't real. They don't want to deal with this. It's their whole life has been built around one conception. They don't want to deal with it. But the other half time they're like, what? Really? Tell me more about that. And the next thing you know, they are the kind of people who are changing systems, but you can't do that unless you want to.
And so what I keep trying to have happen in the new book is my best effort at that so far is just ask the questions, right? Ask the questions. The people who are getting promoted around here, what are they doing that I'm not doing?
You can ask that question without any judgment whatsoever. But we could learn something about the system by seeing that, right? Uh, that's an example. So if you look at Fortune 100 companies, what does it mean to be a super senior vice president getting paid seven figures at these companies? It doesn't mean that you're great at spreadsheets and sales. It means you're great at going to meetings. That's what it means. And the people who are the best at going to meetings get invited to more meetings than they get promoted. So if you knew that and you wanted to move up, you could discover that the answer is not to stay late on Saturday to get better at going to meetings.
[00:23:19] Speaker A: That is an excellent Runway to the second half of the episode. So we'll be right back after this break and we'll talk. This is strategy.
[00:23:29] Speaker D: This is the New Money New Problems podcast, a show for successful professionals searching for the tools they need to navigate financial opportunities and obstacles they've never seen. We'll be right back.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Are you wondering what new money problems you might be overlooking in your financial life? If so, we've got great news.
We've crafted the New Money New Problems gap finder to identify potential weaknesses in your finances in areas ranging from budgeting, investments, insurance, and even a threshold your extended family's finances could pose to your household. Please head to newmoney. New problems.comgapfinder to complete it today. Again, that's new money, new problems.comgapfinder to take the assessment.
[00:24:27] Speaker D: You're listening to the New Money, New Problems podcast. Subscribe now at New Money, New Problems.
Welcome back.
[00:24:37] Speaker A: Welcome back for the break. We are here with Seth Godin, prolific author of, or, uh, more than, I think, 20 bestsellers, uh, writer of a daily blog, guests, uh, on many podcasts. Just very, very prolific. And today, this part of the episode we're going to talk about. This is Strategy, his most recent book. So, Seth, are you okay if I just kind of go through some of the notes that I've taken?
[00:25:00] Speaker C: I'd love that. I haven't memorized the book, so you'll have to give me a little prep. But I'm ready.
[00:25:05] Speaker A: I'm all good. I'm prepared. I'll, uh, remind you of them, I'm sure.
So in the book, one of the, uh, segments, it talks about people's base needs, and you compare it to water and comfort, uh, in a warm home. And you say that beyond people's base needs, they want affiliation, status, and freedom from fear. And, uh, that good marketing addresses one of those deeper level needs. Can you speak to why those are such important elements of a person's comfortability?
[00:25:41] Speaker C: Yeah. Well, okay. By good marketing, I don't mean good ads. I mean anything in our world that is succeeding. So what is status? Status is who eats lunch first. Status is you got to be the deacon at the church. Status is this person's wearing a nicer outfit than me. By what measure? Status is, sure, who's got a fancier car? But status is also, in some communities, who's got more kids, or in other communities, who's got less kids. Status is we're keeping score of something. Affiliation is who's to my left and who's to my right. Do I fit in? My favorite example of this happened to me a few weeks ago. I went to a wedding. Don't really like weddings. And we had to park our cars. And then a little golf cart was taking people down the driveway, and I'm waiting there. There's one other guy waiting, and he's wearing a tuxedo. And I'm like, oh. Uh.
Because if I'm the only person in the wedding without a tuxedo, I feel terrible because I'm not in sync. Then two other people show up, they're wearing suits, and I watch the guy with the tuxedo go to himself and go, uh, oh, because he's the only guy in a tuxedo. Right. So those Things drive us so far. And then the third one, the big one, is the freedom from fear, which is not actual fear, but just knowing that we could be farther away from fear. So for some people that means a nest egg in the bank because for them fear is running out of money. But for other people, and this is a huge portion of the US population, it's always being in debt. Because if you're always in just the right amount of debt, you don't have to think very hard about money. You just have to barely stay above. So now you're not afraid of the choices because you have no choices. Freedom from fear.
[00:27:30] Speaker A: Uh, in our work, probably the toughest conversation to have with a person is when they are in a house that they need to sell. They bought too much house, they bought too much car, you know, they're in a job that they need to quit or they have goals where they just don't make enough money to reach those goals. And in the book you say that one of the biggest reasons that people stay in systems is, uh, sunk costs. Yeah, the money and the time that they've already put into something. How do you overcome that sunk cost preventing you from doing something that just objectively needs to be done.
[00:28:12] Speaker C: So you need to begin by understanding what it even is. So a couple simple examples. Uh, you saved up and you got one, ah, hundred dollars tickets to go see a musician. And the concert starts in an hour and you're walking to the concert and as you're walking you run into your best friend from college who you haven't seen. And he says, we're having my birthday party at the fanciest restaurant in town and there are going to be all these people you've ever wanted to meet there. Come as my guest.
Should you go or should you say, I never want to see you again and go to the hundred dollar concert, uh, because you paid a hundred bucks, it's very clear you should go to the dinner because the hundred dollar ticket is a gift from your former self to you. The you of yesterday gave you those tickets and you don't have to take them because you got a better offer that if you went to law School and 15 years later there are no good jobs for lawyers. You hate being a lawyer. Being a lawyer gives you a stomachache. You don't have to be a lawyer tomorrow because that law degree is a gift from the old version of you.
And we have no trouble, I hope not, using a gift that some stranger gives us if it's not good for us. If a stranger gives you an armadillo and says, you need to take this on as a pet for the rest of your life. You say, I don't want an armadillo. Well, the same thing's true with that, uh, house that's too big for you and your family, because that's a gift that you worked really hard, the old Jew to get. And you can say to the old Jew, you know what I'd rather have? I'd rather have the cash and freedom I can get if I sell this house.
[00:29:53] Speaker A: That's great, great advice that I'm going to steal.
[00:29:56] Speaker C: Please do. That's why I'm here.
[00:30:00] Speaker A: There's another section in the book where you talk about the elements, and I'm actually going to pull up my notes, so I'm going to cheat a little bit, um, that you talk about like the elements of a, ah, project. You said that there's three ways to put effort into a project. One of them is chores and tasks, uh, and then the second is leverage and outsourcing. And the third is emotional labor. And if I read correctly, we're trying to get to the point where we're spending more time on emotional labor. Right. How do you position yourself so that you're not doing the chores and the tasks?
[00:30:36] Speaker C: Well, first you got to decide you don't want to do the chores and the tasks. Most of us sign up for jobs, which are just chores and tasks. We want the boss to take responsibility and we'll just do what we were told. When someone says, I'm just doing my job, what they're saying is, I'm doing chores and tasks right now. And the two problems with that are, one, you don't get paid very much to do that because they can find somebody else to do chores and tasks. And number two, AI is going to do chores and tasks for free.
So if that's your job and you love it and you're getting paid fairly, please keep doing it. But if you want to move up, what it is to move up is to decide to become the person who hires folks who do chores and tasks and instead makes plans, makes strategies, solves interesting problems. And the challenge of solving an interesting problem is that you went to school for 12 or 15 or whatever years and not once did they ask you a question they didn't know the answer to.
And when you go to work, if you're going to do important work, your job is to solve a problem that no one knows the answer to.
[00:31:52] Speaker A: This next one connects to that because it's about how you Charge for the work that you do. And I want to read this quote exactly. It says open quote. If you sell your time at the lowest possible price, you'll always be busy helping someone else get to where they're going. Successful people figure out how to trade their time and effort for the change they seek to make in the world.
I don't even know if that's a question as much as man, but if you could expound.
[00:32:23] Speaker C: Well, okay, so you know, some of the people listening to this are freelancers. You have only one boss, and it's you. And you got that way because you wanted a job without a boss. The problem is, the boss you have now is an idiot. You, because he keeps waking you up in the middle of the night telling you you're not doing a good job, he keeps getting you bad clients, he keeps undervaluing your work. And that's a race to the bottom. If you're on fiverr or upwork or one of those services, or if you're just hustling for the next gig doing tasks and chores, you're competing on price and it's just going to keep getting cheaper and cheaper. And the alternative is to race to the top and to say, I do something distinct enough that you're not going to easily find someone who can do it the way I do it. That people aren't going to say, get me a, uh, locksmith or get me a massage therapist. They're going to say, get me Brenton. And when that happens, you're racing to the top. You are showing up to make a change happen that you are the best at making happen. And you can do that with your day job, too, Right? So if you're working at a company with 30 people and the boss has a choice of four people to pick for something really important, why are they going to pick you? Is it because you will do tasks and chores, uh, more quietly and for, with more hours than other people? Or is it because you bring something distinct to this work and they're going to look good because they picked you?
[00:33:59] Speaker A: I will stay on that thread and I'll use something that you've talked about in multiple books.
It sounds like it's very important that you identify the people who are able to see that in you. Right. You're both evaluating.
[00:34:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: And in both. This is strategy. And some of your early works, you. You tell people to effectively ignore those who come to your business or your work down the line and to focus the majority of your efforts on those who pay attention to it first.
The. The early adopters.
[00:34:36] Speaker C: Well, you're mixing two things here, so. Okay, I'm happy for you to edit it. I'm happy for you to edit this. Or we can leave it in.
[00:34:43] Speaker A: Oh, I'll leave it in.
[00:34:44] Speaker C: Okay, so there are two things that we're talking about here. The first one is this. When you choose your customers or your boss, you are choosing your future.
When you go to look for a job, you're not hoping that someone's going to pick you. You're auditioning your next boss, and you are worth it. Your days are worth it. Don't work for a jerk. Don't work for someone who wants you to work for pennies. Don't work for someone who wants you to stay exactly the way you are. Don't work for someone who's evil or disrespectful. Don't work for someone who's making the world worse. Go audition bosses and earn the privilege of working for someone who's making a change the way you want it to be made. If you're a freelancer, the only way to get paid better is to get better clients. You don't get better clients by doing harder work for bad clients. You get better clients by becoming the kind of freelancer, uh, that better clients want to hire.
Okay, so that's the first part. The second part is that when an idea is spreading through the culture, the first people who buy it are different than the last people who buy it. So you know somebody who bought an iPhone the first couple months it was on sale. You know somebody who bought bitcoin when it was $10, and they can't stop talking about it. Right. You know, somebody who likes to go first, who's always listening to music that's not on, um, Spotify yet. Those people are early adopters.
When new ideas come along, we should ignore people who don't like new ideas, and we should try to find people who do like new ideas. So this podcast, over a hundred episodes your first week, only 10 people listen to it. Now, lots of people listen to it, and soon even more people will listen to it. There are some people who like to listen to a podcast as soon as it comes out. And there are other people who wait until three friends tell them about a podcast and then they join in. There's early adopters, and there's people who.
[00:36:48] Speaker A: Go later when a correction is that profound, not only will I leave it in, uh, I'll, uh, end the podcast with it.
This was so enjoyable. Like I said, I so appreciate your time we will put the link, of course, to this is strategy and your other works in, uh, the show notes to this episode. But is there anything else you would like to share in terms of what people should pay attention to, how to reach you and the like?
[00:37:15] Speaker C: So my best advice is this.
You need to find three friends who have listened to to all the episodes of this podcast and you need to talk to those people once a week until you're all comfortable with the story you're telling yourselves about money.
And so if you're gonna do one thing after you listen to this podcast, it's fine if you buy my book, it's fine. If you don't, you read my blog instead. Seth's top blog. But go share this podcast with 10 people and find out which ones are willing to listen to some more. And then do the very emotionally difficult thing of telling each other the truth about what you're learning. That peer to peer conversation is how human beings change. Don't listen to the giant media in the center. It's peer to peer conversation based on honest insights like you've been getting from this podcast that is worth your time.
[00:38:16] Speaker A: Great advice, great time spent. And Seth, thank you for being a guest on the New Money New Problems podcast.
[00:38:23] Speaker C: Thank you for having me. Made my day.
[00:38:28] Speaker B: From New Money New Problems. This was the New Money m New Problems podcast, a show for successful professionals searching for the tools they need to navigate financial opportunities and obstacles they've never, ever seen.
