0:00

Hey, what's up, dude?

0:06

Hey, what's going

0:08

on? We are having

0:10

a very special guest today, Seth

0:12

Godin,

0:13

who I gotta say I'm

0:15

pretty excited to talk to. He's a pretty famous dude.

0:19

I think this is going to be the first person, one of

0:21

the first people I've ever talked to where I've

0:24

read at least three of their books. Yeah,

0:27

that's a lot. What have you read? So

0:29

I read The Icarus Deception, I've

0:31

read This Is Marketing, which is amazing, and

0:34

I read The Dip.

0:35

What about you? Cool. I've

0:38

read This Is Marketing. It's the only Seth Godin book that

0:40

I've read, but he's done a ton.

0:42

I feel like I've encountered him everywhere. I

0:45

subscribe to his newsletter, I've read his blog for

0:47

years, I've watched a few of his talks.

0:50

I think he's given

0:51

three TED Talks. He's written 20

0:54

best-selling books. He's like the

0:56

modern-day David Ogilvie. He's

1:00

the most popular marketer of our time,

1:02

besides maybe Gary Vaynerchuk. The two of

1:04

them seem to be making the most waves as

1:07

famous internet marketers. Yeah,

1:09

it's insane. In fact, I think

1:11

the first viral post that was

1:13

ever on IndieHackers, we used to have a lot of interviews,

1:16

founder interviews, but the first non-founder

1:18

interview that was huge on Hacker News,

1:20

etc., was some guy

1:22

had Seth on his podcast and then turned that into

1:24

an article and was like, if I only had $1,000. I

1:29

asked Seth Godin, if you only had $1,000, what would you do? He

1:32

posted it to IndieHackers, that shit went ballistic.

1:35

Yeah, maybe we should do the same thing. It was,

1:37

if you only have $1,000, you don't have your

1:39

name, nobody knows who you are, what business

1:41

would you start today? I think it's a cool

1:44

question for somebody who's successful, because somebody like Seth

1:46

is so well-known. I mean, if you're given

1:48

one TED Talk, you're well-known. I think he's given

1:50

three or four TED Talks. Anything

1:53

he starts, it's almost like he has a- TED Talks,

1:55

not TEDx. Yeah, not TEDx. It's just bullshit.

1:58

My aunt invited me to this thing to give a talk. on the

2:00

road at my local school, really on the

2:02

main TED stage with Bill Gates and

2:04

the audience.

2:06

If you're like that, then anything you do, there's

2:09

kind of an asterisk by it, which is like,

2:11

can someone learn from what you did because your

2:13

name

2:14

and your existing distribution channels are a

2:16

huge part of your success. And

2:19

so I like that question for somebody like Seth, because

2:21

he'll be able to dispense wisdom and how-to advice

2:23

for somebody

2:25

like all the rest of us who don't necessarily

2:27

have that privileged position. I

2:29

wonder how conscious he is about

2:32

being everywhere all the time. Like,

2:34

have you heard of the 7-11-4 marketing rule? I

2:37

read this in this marketing book recently. It's

2:39

this idea that like, you wanna get your brand out there,

2:41

you want people to be exposed to you. And so the

2:44

7-11-4 rule is you want someone,

2:46

like someone's gonna be really into you if they see seven hours

2:49

of your content on 11 different

2:51

occasions, like times, and in four different

2:54

like digital locations. So like you have

2:56

a YouTube video, you have some stuff on Twitter and they

2:58

see you on like podcasts. But like, it's

3:00

like, you know, if I bet fucking Seth would see that

3:03

and be like, oh, that's child's play, only a 7-11-4, he's

3:05

like, yeah, add two zeros to all of them and

3:08

there you have Seth Godin.

3:10

I mean, he is

3:12

everywhere, his terms are everywhere too.

3:14

Like, I know patio 11, Patrick

3:16

McKenzie is very fond

3:18

of saying like purple cow, right? You wanna do marketing,

3:21

you gotta make sure what you do stands out, it's gotta be a purple cow.

3:23

Well, that's like literally a Seth Godin book that just became

3:25

like common marketing

3:28

parlance. Or permission marketing is another thing

3:30

that Seth Godin came up with, which is just like a common

3:32

term of art, but it's like traceable back to Seth Godin.

3:34

Like this guy has created dozens

3:37

of terms and concepts

3:39

that like everybody uses. And so even if

3:41

you don't see him for seven

3:43

hours and 11 different places or whatever,

3:46

like you see his words and you Google them and look at,

3:48

look them up, like that's what you find.

3:50

Right, and I think the thing

3:52

that's so cool about Seth in my opinion is

3:56

it's not just talk, he's not

3:58

just someone that's on Twitter trying to. terms

4:00

and get like a lot of exposure. He's

4:02

one of the OGs right like he's like

4:05

you know back in the in the in the

4:07

zero zero just a teacher right

4:09

not just a teacher like he was he's been around

4:11

doing doing startup stuff since before the dot-com

4:14

boom

4:15

yeah I looked up some stuff on him like

4:17

because I hear him talk but I never

4:19

hear him talk about himself so I looked up like okay who

4:21

was Seth going like where did he come from

4:24

he I think his first real success was this company

4:27

called yo yo dine

4:28

I looked up the story it's kind of hard to find anything about it

4:30

because it was like a very early internet

4:34

company he started it in 1995

4:37

he was 35 years old so he's already like

4:39

well into his career but he hadn't done anything

4:41

big yet and then three years later

4:43

he

4:44

sold it

4:45

for 30 million dollars 30 million

4:47

dollars and Yahoo stock this is back

4:50

on like the yeah yeah yeah

4:52

he's not worth a lot today but

4:54

like in 1998 like that was huge

4:57

I mean by the way 90 98 that's

4:59

when Yahoo is like the search

5:01

engine like they are like the Google

5:03

of today or whatever right yeah yeah

5:05

they were like the biggest internet company by far they were

5:08

like the all-stars their market cap

5:10

was insane there were billions

5:12

of billions of dollars and like that 30 million

5:15

dollars of Yahoo

5:15

stock he got in like 1998 or whatever

5:18

probably was worth two or three times as much

5:20

in 1999 and then by 2000 it was

5:22

probably worth like 10% of

5:24

because of the stock

5:26

market crash right but yo yo dine was

5:28

I think it was such a smart company it was right

5:32

at the heart of like sort of the 90s tech boom the internet

5:34

was crazy anybody who added comm

5:37

to their domain name just could instantly IPO

5:39

and see their stock like shoot up and

5:42

yo yo dine was a marketing company which is not surprising

5:45

for Seth Godin and so they had a bunch of different things

5:47

they would do part of it was like they were

5:49

an agency so I found like this really cool

5:51

article from some publication

5:54

called Chief Marketer there are 1999

5:56

they're quoting Seth Godin they said we brought

5:58

promotional thinking to online

5:59

and commerce. Seth Godin says that matter

6:02

factly, it's a big claim, but it's true. The

6:04

whole sort of offer response reward sequence

6:06

was common enough to offline businesses.

6:09

So that's given customers like premium offers and free

6:11

trials and sample products, but

6:14

that hadn't really happened on the web.

6:16

And so Seth Godin kind of

6:19

brought this to the web. And the article

6:21

says with the net still in its infancy, many consumers

6:23

weren't sure of its security. Many retailers

6:25

found the technology forbidden. And

6:28

you can tell this article is from 1999 because they called

6:30

it the net. The net, yeah. But

6:33

basically this company, Yoyo Dine would work with these companies.

6:36

They would offer promotions, they'd make banner ads.

6:39

They worked with MasterCard to create something called EZ

6:41

Spree, which was this giant online mall.

6:44

They called it a merchant factory. So it was a search

6:46

engine where any sort of- Shopify.

6:49

Yeah, it was like Shopify. It was like early Shopify.

6:52

They said any merchant could come and

6:54

create an identical online format for their store.

6:57

And set it up and start selling products

7:00

in less than half an hour.

7:01

So that kind of reminds me of also Paul Graham. Paul

7:03

Graham also built, he built VioWeb in

7:06

the mid 90s. He also sold it to Yahoo, become

7:08

Yahoo stores. So now there's sort of early

7:10

version of Shopify. Back

7:13

when everybody was scared to put the credit card on the internet, Paul

7:15

Graham and Seth- That's interesting. I've never actually

7:17

known what Paul Graham did. Like

7:19

I knew he did some kind of startup but I didn't actually

7:21

look into it. They both did

7:23

the same thing. They both

7:25

sold huge e-commerce marketing

7:27

businesses to Yahoo in the 90s for

7:30

tens of millions of dollars. Hopefully

7:32

they both exited

7:33

the stock market before it crashed and then they both

7:35

became writers. Paul Graham started blogging politically.

7:38

Seth also started blogging.

7:40

So he has

7:42

one of the biggest blogs online. He doesn't talk a lot

7:44

about the numbers but I found a blog post that said he

7:46

has over a million subscribers

7:48

to his blog.

7:49

And in 2009 he had I think 253,000 RSS subscribers too.

7:54

But he started this blog in 2002. And

7:58

since then he's been sending out- a blog

8:00

post literally every single day. He's

8:02

written 8,500 blog posts. And

8:06

sometimes they're just like two sentences or like a paragraph.

8:09

But sometimes they're like a legitimately huge blog post. Like

8:12

I've been subscribed for years. I've had to like unsubscribe

8:14

because it's too much sometimes. I've resubscribed.

8:17

But it's like, I mean, can you imagine having a million

8:19

people on our newsletter? We would crush

8:21

it and add a revenue. And

8:23

this is just like one guy's blog. It's not like a whole

8:25

company. It's just one person

8:28

blogging about what he thinks every day. He's just firing off

8:30

thoughts. And like some of his posts, it's funny. Like

8:32

you read it. Some of his posts, just like you said,

8:34

are like three sentences.

8:35

But they're always, they're

8:38

always saying. Am I in the right place at the right time? Hey,

8:40

there he is. The guy himself. Hi Seth. Welcome

8:42

to the show. Love it when that happens. Thank you both

8:45

for having me. It's a pleasure to have

8:47

you. We were just talking about basically

8:49

your career. Like I've

8:51

watched so many of your talks. Channing has read

8:53

three of your books. I've read one. I've

8:56

been subscribed to your blog on and off. Sometimes

8:58

it's too much. I'm like, I hear Seth every day unsubscribe.

9:01

And then like six months later, I'm like, I want to hear what Seth has to say, resubscribe.

9:04

But most of the time I hear you talking about like other people,

9:06

internet phenomenon, case

9:08

studies, like what's going on in the world. I hear a lot about like you.

9:12

And so I want to take a minute, if it's cool with

9:14

you, to just like

9:15

pick your brain about you

9:16

and the things that you've done. I do that on purpose.

9:19

And so I'm not really comfortable making

9:21

a podcast about me. I'm

9:23

happy to explain why that is. I

9:25

would love to hear why. There are two reasons.

9:28

The first one is when my

9:30

kid was six, I'd made a blog

9:32

post that he was peripherally mentioned

9:34

in. And someone said to my wife the

9:36

next day, how's your son feeling? And

9:39

that was so weird. I was like, never

9:41

doing that again. And the

9:44

second thing is, if I make

9:46

my stories about me, then

9:49

I let people off the hook cause they can say, well,

9:51

he had privilege or he had a really

9:53

cool family or he had this, I don't.

9:56

And so what I try to do is make

9:58

them varied enough.

10:00

and generic enough, but still interesting,

10:03

that people put themselves on the hook. Because I don't

10:05

want to be a hero, I want to be a teacher.

10:07

That's a profound way to look at it. I think that it's

10:11

like playing on hard mode because probably

10:13

the easiest source of stories for anybody is their

10:15

own life, right? You don't have to go

10:17

out and do any research. You're the expert on your own life.

10:20

Exactly, so you gotta become an expert on other

10:22

things. What's your process for that

10:24

like? Like what is the behind

10:27

the scenes machine of set? To be so

10:29

prolific, for example, like to write a blog post

10:32

every single day to give, I think you've given like a thousand

10:34

talks. Where does all this come from? You

10:37

know, we

10:37

had a problem with our garbage disposal last

10:40

year, and when the plumber came over to fix

10:42

it, I didn't ask him, because no one ever asked

10:44

him, where do you find the inspiration

10:46

to fix all these drains? Right.

10:49

He doesn't say, you got any whiskey, I'm having plumber's

10:52

block.

10:53

Because there's no such thing as plumber's

10:55

block. So I don't go to

10:57

meetings, I watch very little television, I

10:59

don't use social media. I got seven,

11:02

eight, nine hours a day to

11:04

do stuff that people could

11:06

easily do in half that time. But

11:09

they get distracted with chores instead.

11:12

And again, it's about being on

11:14

the hook.

11:15

I don't view my

11:17

benefit of the doubt and my privilege lightly.

11:20

And if someone's willing to listen to what I

11:22

have to say, I don't wanna waste it.

11:25

So our community, our podcast, it's called Indie

11:27

Hackers.

11:28

It's all about basically people who

11:30

quit working for the man to start their own sort of one

11:32

person online tech company.

11:34

And it's so common for people

11:37

to go to work every day, year after year, put

11:39

in 40 hours, 50 hours a week of work, and

11:41

then they quit to do their dream and struggle

11:44

to

11:45

get anything done on the week. I

11:47

remember Channing, when you quit your job, Channing used to work in

11:49

sales, and he quit his job and I taught him how to code, and he

11:51

wanted to be a programmer. He's like, Portland, I can't believe you worked

11:53

home all day, I get so much done. And then like

11:56

a month after he quits, he's like, I'm going to the gym

11:58

in the middle of the day, I'm doing my laundry. I need

12:00

to clean my room like suddenly life becomes

12:02

all these other chores and distractions and it's really

12:04

hard I don't know what it is about the workplace

12:07

where we can sit down and focus Maybe it's accountability

12:09

to our teammates But once we're working for ourselves like

12:11

you do Seth, it's hard to yeah

12:13

You make it sound easy, but it's hard to put those distractions aside

12:16

and just resistance, right? You've read Pressfield

12:19

Resistance is

12:20

the thing that when we stare into the Sun

12:22

it holds us back And what I mean by chores

12:25

is more than Channing's laundry though. Channing probably

12:27

does an excellent job on his laundry Chores

12:30

also include sending out bills.

12:32

They include maintaining your servers they

12:34

include any job where you can

12:36

write down the spec to get it done and

12:39

The reason it's hard as a soloist

12:41

to do that is if you start spending

12:44

cash money to get people

12:46

to save you time You are on

12:48

the hook to have your

12:50

time be more valuable than the

12:52

money you just spent to solve the problem and All

12:56

those years I was a struggling freelancer I

12:58

did so many chores which was

13:00

good in the sense that I learned how to do a bunch of stuff

13:03

But it was bad

13:05

because I only had a couple hours a day

13:07

to be a productive Freelancer

13:10

and I was spending the rest of the time being the support

13:12

staff for that freelancer

13:14

And so I don't have any problem with outsourcing

13:17

The one thing you can't outsource is

13:19

the thing you want people to value from

13:21

you that has to come from you

13:23

How sort of swiftly did you did

13:26

you move into that phase and you know,

13:28

whether it was there anything you learned You

13:30

had to learn to get there

13:32

Okay, so I think it's a two-part process

13:35

the first part is Getting

13:38

in the habit of seeking out the hard parts

13:41

and at work There's

13:44

very little reward for that when you work

13:47

for somebody else At the

13:49

gym the only people who are fit

13:51

are the people who sought out the hard parts That's why

13:53

they went to the gym like

13:55

back when I would go to the gym There would be people

13:57

you'd see them there for three hours in between going to

14:00

the drinking fountain and walking over the tower.

14:02

They worked out for six minutes, right? Because

14:05

they were avoiding the hard part. That's

14:07

me in the gym. But

14:10

if we think about the creative

14:12

greats, you

14:14

know, I just finished Herbie Hancock's autobiography

14:16

the other day. If we think about

14:18

people like Dylan or like Leonard

14:20

Cohen or writers, they

14:23

say

14:24

the part that I'm trying to avoid is the

14:26

reason I am here.

14:27

Let me figure out how to relish

14:30

that, look forward to that. So

14:32

then once it becomes a habit, here's

14:34

the amazing thing. It stops

14:37

being that hard. So in

14:39

my case, it took me about 100 blog posts

14:41

before I wrote a blog post. It sounded like me. And

14:44

then once I knew what I sounded like, I

14:47

proposed blog posts all day long

14:50

to myself and I regularly

14:52

reject them, not because they're hard to write,

14:54

because they don't sound like me. And

14:57

once you got the groove, then

15:00

it's just joyful because the thing,

15:03

you know, and frustrating because now I miss the

15:05

hard parts because they're not hard.

15:07

And so I have to go do a new project where I'm

15:09

incompetent

15:11

so that I can get that feeling back.

15:13

There's this, um, one of your posts that resonated

15:16

with me was, I think you called it process versus outcomes.

15:19

And it's, I've seen this idea in a few other places

15:21

too, where, you know, I think the

15:23

analogy you painted was like certain people, like

15:25

a sports fan goes to the game thinking about

15:27

the outcome. I want my team to win and they've predetermined.

15:30

If my team doesn't win, I'm going to be sad. If

15:32

they do win, I'm going to be happy. Whereas other professions

15:34

are a lot more process oriented. Like a scientist,

15:37

you're committed to a very particular process.

15:39

You trust in that process, whatever the outcome is going

15:41

to be. You're going to be able to live with that

15:43

regardless. As long as you put the inputs in,

15:45

you're not worried about the outcome so much. And that,

15:47

you know, that's true to some degree, of course, every scientist

15:49

wants to get published in nature and whatnot. But I

15:52

think for entrepreneurs, it's really hard

15:54

because most people who start to become entrepreneurs,

15:56

like they want to

15:57

get rich or they want to quit their job, but they want to work on what they

15:59

want.

15:59

they want to be a success and that's an outcome.

16:02

And it's really, I think, nerve wracking for a lot

16:04

of people to sit down and

16:07

try not to think about that outcome when it's so hard

16:09

to achieve. Most entrepreneurs don't succeed.

16:12

I wonder how you think about this with your career. Are you

16:14

really process-oriented? Do you really

16:16

just sit down and not think about outcomes? And to what degree,

16:18

like, do you think others can think about that

16:20

because it's just so difficult

16:22

to succeed? So I

16:24

wrote about this in the practice. I think that there's

16:26

a, the

16:28

Buddhist idea of attachment is really important.

16:31

If the three of us wanted

16:34

to run from here across town

16:37

and be near each other, if we just kept

16:40

an eye on each other and stayed about six feet

16:42

apart, it would be very easy. But

16:44

if we attached to each other

16:46

with a long rope, it would be really

16:48

hard because everybody's

16:51

movement would jerk us around. And

16:56

your team winning is

16:58

out of your control when you're playing a sport.

17:01

What's in your control is, did

17:03

you make the pass to that other

17:06

right-winger in a way that they could

17:08

receive the pass? So you need

17:11

feedback loops. The scientist needs

17:14

to see the result of each

17:16

experiment to find out if their process is any good.

17:20

And so I

17:22

failed a lot at the beginning because I was ignoring

17:25

the

17:25

people I was trying to sell to. I bought

17:27

into the make it for yourself, be authentic

17:29

thing, which is completely

17:31

wrong. I needed to make it for them.

17:34

I needed to put on a show for them that they

17:36

wanted to buy. So I needed to pay attention

17:38

to the clues of why things weren't selling. But

17:41

once I had publishing partners,

17:44

I needed to ignore whether

17:46

or not the book sold a lot of copies because

17:48

that's a somewhat random event. And

17:51

being attached to random events

17:54

takes our eye off the process. And

17:57

so

17:58

it's both. You can't drive.

17:59

a car without feel from the steering wheel and the curb,

18:02

but you also can't drive a car if you need to make sure

18:05

that there's no traffic chance between here and Toledo. It's

18:07

never going to happen.

18:09

Maybe you just answered

18:11

this question, but it's something that I've

18:13

thought about because I've read a lot of your work and

18:15

you speak about this tension between everybody

18:18

wanting to be authentic, but then you're here

18:20

to serve your audience. And

18:23

yet, I think famously, as much

18:26

as you blog, you've turned off your comment section

18:29

and you've mentioned that you don't want to be

18:31

riding, you don't want to be a hack, you don't want to just

18:33

be riding things just for the sake

18:36

of getting engagements. And is that connected

18:38

to you figured it out for the

18:41

most part and now once you've figured out

18:44

what you need to do and how to execute, everything

18:46

else is a bit of a distraction?

18:48

I didn't figure anything out.

18:51

I think that what I realized

18:54

that one of my many personality

18:56

defects is anonymous

18:59

trolling really gets under my skin. And

19:03

so what was happening was anonymous trolls were writing

19:05

comments on my blog

19:06

and I would read them thinking I was going to be a better

19:08

blogger as a result. And instead,

19:10

I just didn't want to blog anymore

19:12

because why would you invite someone into your

19:15

living room to dump crap on the floor?

19:17

And so the only way I could

19:19

have a blog is if I had no comments. I don't have

19:21

to host the trolls. They can go somewhere else. But

19:25

feedback advice is

19:27

different than angry criticism. If someone

19:29

gives you a book, a one star review, they're

19:32

not saying they didn't like the book. They're saying

19:34

the book wasn't for them. And

19:37

for the solo software entrepreneur,

19:40

this could not be a more important idea.

19:43

You don't need everyone. You will not have

19:45

everyone. Even WhatsApp

19:47

didn't have everyone.

19:48

You will have the people who it's for. And

19:51

if someone says this isn't for me, you

19:54

shouldn't try to explain yourself. You should say thank you.

19:56

Thank you for telling me it's not for you. Go over

19:59

there. you. This is for people

20:01

who want this. And

20:04

so I don't

20:05

seek out new readers. And I got a new blog,

20:08

a new book coming out. And I want to talk

20:10

to my existing readers that

20:12

the Song of Significance is here, but I'm not trying to get

20:14

people who have never read my work to go read it

20:17

because they probably won't get it. So this

20:20

is a good, uh, good point to switch

20:22

over from exclusively asking

20:24

you about yourself, which we've been doing, even

20:27

though you don't love it, to talking about

20:29

your new book. It's called The Song of Significance. When does

20:31

it, when does it come out? It's out Tuesday,

20:33

May 30th.

20:34

And, um, the audio

20:37

book almost killed me recording it, which is a whole other

20:39

story, but it's personal

20:42

and it's urgent. It's a rant

20:44

about bringing

20:45

humanity back to our days,

20:48

as opposed to being cogs in a machine. It's

20:50

about false proxies. And

20:52

it's about, um, the brutality

20:56

of late stage industrial capitalism.

20:59

Yeah. You've come on the right show to discuss

21:01

these topics because we're literally

21:03

talking to tens of thousands of people right now who are

21:06

their number one dream is to basically stop working

21:08

for the man, stop working at these big companies and

21:11

do their own thing. And I think your book takes a little

21:13

bit of a different angle. Um, and the media

21:15

kit that you sent us, I read the intro and it says,

21:18

as we mechanize and routine eyes and surveil

21:21

every employee, we haven't already replaced

21:24

outsourced or automated, which is very relevant with all these

21:26

new AI developments we're having. It's become clear

21:28

that work isn't what it used to be. Bosses

21:30

are letting their employees down just as quickly

21:33

as employees seem to be letting down their

21:35

bosses. And so I've seen a lot of stories like this. People

21:37

are quite quitting. People are getting

21:39

two and three jobs because they've realized they can phone it

21:41

in a one job and working remote now. And like people

21:44

just don't care, right? It's about what

21:46

can I get away with? It's not about valuing

21:48

the work. It's not about valuing employees. And

21:51

you said there's a fork in the word either we race to

21:53

the bottom and we make work

21:55

more soul sucking, innovating and fungible,

21:58

or we decide to choose significant.

21:59

instead. And so I think

22:02

a lot of what your book is about is about for people who

22:04

run companies or manage people, like how can we

22:07

make a better world for ourselves? And I think what

22:09

we're doing at Indie Hackers is we're just like, screw

22:11

all that, just quit. Go

22:14

start your own thing, work for yourself, all these

22:16

same technologies that are automating you out

22:18

of your job you can use to be more productive as an

22:20

entrepreneur. What

22:22

do you say to that? Is that like a dystopian nightmare?

22:24

Is that where we want to see things going or is there

22:26

a better way?

22:28

Oh, I think small c market

22:30

driven capitalism is the

22:33

only way that I can see how we're

22:35

gonna make things better. If you

22:37

are a solo entrepreneur, you have to listen to

22:40

the market. You cannot command

22:42

people to do what you say. You cannot seek

22:45

to buy out your competition. You have to say,

22:47

I have something of utility. If

22:50

you want it, this is who here it is. If you don't,

22:52

I better make it better.

22:54

And as somebody

22:56

who has been a soloist off and on for 40 years,

22:59

it's thrilling. It's

23:01

important, I think, to differentiate

23:03

between freelancers and entrepreneurs. A

23:06

lot of freelancers like me aren't

23:08

trying to build an entity that works

23:10

when they're not there,

23:12

are not seeking outside

23:14

investment and then be able to sell

23:16

an asset. That's what entrepreneurs do.

23:19

Freelancers

23:20

say, I am the star of

23:23

this particular show. I don't have to put my name on it, but it's me.

23:26

And

23:27

I'm going to leverage me to

23:29

get better clients to solve more

23:31

interesting problems and to get paid fairly for doing

23:33

so.

23:34

The danger of being a freelancer who thinks

23:37

you're an entrepreneur is you will do all the

23:39

things entrepreneurs do, raise money, scale,

23:41

etc. When you actually have a business

23:43

that

23:44

sings when you're a freelancer and

23:46

stumbles

23:47

when you're an entrepreneur. An example that isn't

23:50

tech at all is if you

23:53

bake wedding cakes in your home kitchen

23:55

and you from scratch build $4,000

23:58

wedding cakes, it would be a mistake

24:01

for you to take a 6,000 square foot

24:03

facility, hire 12 people and build

24:05

wedding cakes incorporated because the very

24:07

thing that made you great is now going to make you not

24:09

great. That reminds me of let's

24:12

call it the McDonald's vacation,

24:14

which is one way

24:16

that people productize their

24:18

services is they say, well,

24:20

let me figure out how to do it

24:22

myself. Then let me sort of create

24:25

this, you know, what is it? Create

24:28

the standard operating procedures from head to toe

24:30

with everything that I do and then have basically

24:32

people come in and the more robotic

24:35

they act, the better it is for me.

24:38

That's a legitimate way to make money. I

24:40

don't think it's a legitimate way to live the life

24:42

you want to be proud of. And

24:45

most of the mechanized jobs

24:48

like flying an airplane or getting French

24:50

flights. People have figured those out.

24:53

We don't need you to do that. What we need

24:55

you to do is bring something special

24:58

and innovative and flexible

25:01

to the table because the world is changing so

25:03

fast that the big people,

25:06

big companies can't figure out what to do in

25:08

time, but you can.

25:10

And the other piece of it, which I just

25:12

so many people in this day and age don't

25:15

understand, the network

25:17

effect

25:19

really didn't hit its stride until 20 years

25:21

ago. The network effect is

25:23

does your product or service work better

25:25

if other people are using it too? So

25:29

if I

25:30

tell people about my financial advisor, my

25:32

life will not get better.

25:34

If I tell people about my

25:36

Dr. Scholz insoles, my life

25:39

will not get better.

25:40

But if I tell people I'm using

25:42

this social network and they should join me, my

25:44

life

25:45

will get better because they are there too.

25:49

And the network effect

25:51

built the world we are in right now.

25:54

And if I was starting from scratch today,

25:56

I wouldn't do what I did 40 years

25:58

ago.

25:59

I would build communities. I

26:02

would use tech.

26:03

I would use discourse. I would use tools

26:05

like that to say here are 3,000 or 5,000 or 20,000 people who

26:09

will pay to be part of this circle

26:12

of people. And I,

26:14

as the ringleader organizer

26:16

and creative culture, we'll

26:18

get paid for more than fairly to do that.

26:21

So do you think of community is as more

26:23

squarely entrepreneurship or freelancing?

26:26

Because to some degree, being the community organizer,

26:28

like you're bringing yourself to this, a lot

26:30

of communities just die outright when the leader

26:32

leaves. It's almost like a tribe

26:35

or, uh, just a group of people

26:37

that follows a particular vision and everyone's similar,

26:39

but there has to be someone at the core uniting

26:42

that vision, but also people get a lot of value from each other.

26:44

Cause that's the network effect. And so on

26:46

one hand, like maybe our freelancer, right? You're trading your

26:48

time to bring value to this community, to

26:50

connect people.

26:51

But on the other hand, there's so many tools

26:53

and products and people can code now. Um,

26:56

you can build something that, that does work

26:58

when you're not there. Yep. When Channing and I go to sleep,

27:00

there are people on Andy hackers posting, meeting co-founders,

27:02

meeting partners, exchanging ideas, reviewing each other's

27:04

websites, et cetera. So like, which, which campus

27:06

has fallen to, or are we squished

27:09

right in between? No, it's a brilliant example

27:11

of how it could transition.

27:13

So nobody knows who runs Alcoholics Anonymous

27:16

because it's anonymous and nobody

27:18

cares who owns Weight Watchers.

27:20

So yeah, it begins with

27:22

a freelancer who's using tools, but

27:26

you don't have to say this is the place

27:28

to come hang out with so-and-so

27:32

you can say this is a place to hang out with each other.

27:34

And just like the person who starts a bar,

27:36

that person may start out as the soloist,

27:39

but if the bar is working, they don't have to go to

27:41

work every day.

27:42

And the same thing is now amplified

27:45

by tech

27:46

that the community

27:47

should be bigger and more vibrant than the

27:50

founder.

27:51

And

27:52

we don't have all the communities

27:54

we need yet.

27:56

And we're not even close to filling

27:58

that void. There's

28:01

a ridiculous number of 10 person, 100 person, 1,000

28:03

person communities that could exist, that

28:05

don't exist. And because the internet allows people

28:07

from all over the world to connect. If I wanted to

28:09

start a community in my town, it'd be hard. Well,

28:12

I live in Seattle, it's pretty big, so maybe not that hard. But

28:14

you can start the most niche enthusiast communities

28:17

on the internet. People aren't

28:19

even aware of just how niche you can get, and you can connect

28:21

people who would never in a million years think they can meet

28:23

somebody else who's also into Japanese

28:27

dolls that have orange hair and can breathe

28:29

underwater or whatever it is. And you

28:31

connect them and then suddenly, they'll pay to

28:33

be together. So I totally agree with you. I think community's

28:36

underrated. And I also think to your point,

28:39

one of the big questions you ask in your book is,

28:42

what if we created the best job we ever had? We

28:44

have this world where people are being squished into

28:47

these gig worker jobs and personalize

28:49

them and take away from what makes them human. And they're

28:51

treated like a resource for a number. I

28:54

think community is one of the best jobs

28:57

slash businesses almost anyone can participate

28:59

in, because it's kind of like positive for

29:01

everybody. Its relationships, its shared

29:03

interests, it's a human connection, it's

29:06

not automatable, or community

29:08

without people is, I mean, I'm sure somebody out there

29:10

has made some sort of AI community, that's just a bunch of AIs

29:12

talking to each other, but excluding that, community

29:15

without people, is not a thing. And

29:17

so I guess my question for you is, how do you expand

29:19

this principle, this realization? What

29:22

does it mean to create the best job you ever had? Or if you're

29:24

an entrepreneur, what does it mean to create the business that's

29:27

good? How do you design a life?

29:29

So

29:30

it feels to me, Cortland, like folks like

29:32

you and I

29:34

would get great satisfaction from organizing

29:36

a community. There are other people who aren't

29:38

gonna find anything

29:40

positive in that at all. They

29:42

might wanna write

29:44

a piece of code like Osen Audio, which

29:46

I use all the time, that is

29:48

the best editor for Sound Files.

29:50

But I don't know these people's names, and they don't interact

29:52

with anybody,

29:53

right? So there's all

29:56

this whole range of things

29:58

that would be the best job you ever had.

29:59

hat. But let's at least

30:02

find enough confidence to describe what that

30:04

is. Right. Do you want a day

30:07

where your inbox is full or do you want a day where your

30:09

inbox is empty? Do you want to

30:11

have anonymity or do you

30:13

want to be in front of people? What kind of interaction?

30:15

Some people really like talking to trolls.

30:18

Some people don't. Right. So you

30:20

can figure out

30:22

what would light you up that

30:24

you could commit to for years at a time

30:27

and go build that work. And

30:29

the one thing you're not allowed to do is say, I

30:33

want to do my hobby. I want to get paid

30:35

really well and I don't want to interact

30:37

with customers. You're just not

30:39

going to be able to make a living doing that.

30:41

No, it doesn't work.

30:43

Do you think it's possible for society to change

30:45

as a whole in this direction? I think like

30:48

a lot of the trends that are making work less personal

30:50

and less enjoyable, I think aren't

30:52

trends that any one person is deciding on. Like if anything,

30:55

I feel like our culture is becoming more

30:57

human. Like 50 years ago, every business

30:59

owner would have said, profits all that matters. Whereas

31:01

like today, I mean, you have a B Corp. Right. Like

31:03

you're literally certified to care about other stakeholders

31:06

or customers or partners or employees. And

31:08

there's like hundreds of people who've signed, I forget

31:10

what the name of it was. There was like a business roundtable thing a few

31:12

years back where it was like people said, you

31:15

know, hey, capitalism isn't just about

31:17

profits about these other things. I think there's

31:19

more people, consumers holding

31:21

businesses accountable today

31:23

than there were in the past. So I think culturally, it feels

31:25

like we're like

31:26

going in the right direction. Like we want to be more human. We

31:29

want to care more. You know, people in my

31:31

generation, I'm a millennial are a lot

31:33

more focused on purpose and enjoyment of the work

31:35

than like my parents generation, for example. And

31:37

yet, like the technological forces that we have,

31:40

like artificial intelligence, the internet programming

31:42

in general are like driving

31:44

things in the opposite direction, where it's like

31:47

harder to find purpose for a lot of people. My

31:49

question here is like, how do we, what do we

31:51

do? It feels like we're trying to fight and trying to

31:53

push in the right direction. But like, is this even

31:55

a thing that like we as people can do? Like if

31:58

we start a company that follows the

32:00

advice in your book, you know, what effect will that

32:02

have? And will we not just be squashed by these bigger companies

32:04

that are just like, Oh, we're gonna be much, much more economically

32:06

efficient than you and use AI for everything.

32:10

Okay, so there's a couple parts to this question.

32:12

The first one is

32:14

don't underestimate the indoctrination

32:17

of 12 or more years of school of

32:19

parents with a sticker on their car of

32:21

people being pushed to ask, will this

32:23

be on the test? So if you walk into

32:26

one of those big box stores that are still in business, if

32:28

you look in the corner, there's

32:30

a kiosk and it's not an ATM machine.

32:32

It's actually how you apply for a job.

32:34

Type in your social security number, your name,

32:36

it looks you up and then it hires you on the spot, pays

32:39

you minimum wage, easy in easy

32:42

out.

32:43

There are people who want that job.

32:45

They want that job because they don't want to be on the hook.

32:47

They don't want to bring the full self to work. They

32:49

don't want they because they have been brainwashed

32:52

into believing that it is not possible to get

32:54

more than that out of work. And

32:56

so there's a lot of brutalized traumatized

32:58

people

32:59

who aren't going to show up

33:01

the way you two have, the way your community has

33:03

and say, no, no, no, I demand more.

33:06

So that's the first part. The

33:09

second part is, you

33:10

know, I invented email marketing

33:12

and then the industry came in turning from a zero

33:14

billion dollar industry to a $20 billion

33:16

industry. And I had a leave because

33:20

once it catches on, this is not

33:22

room for folks like us. And

33:24

that's probably going to happen to everybody

33:27

who's listening to this who's successful.

33:29

And when the time comes, you should sell

33:32

and go to the next thing because you're not

33:34

looking for a Cinecure. You're looking

33:36

to make a difference. I like that

33:38

idea. There's been

33:40

a lot of people, a lot of indie hackers have been building

33:43

just cool AI tools and there's been a lot of pushback

33:46

about like, well, what you're doing is not going to last. It's not going to be here

33:48

forever. But some of the people I see

33:50

building these tools, like they're like the tinkerers,

33:52

tinkerer, you know, like they just like playing

33:54

with new stuff and they're not concerned that

33:56

this is going to last for 25 years. Like I had a

33:59

moment. This was fun, I made some money, I made people's

34:01

lives happy, I made myself happy, and

34:03

now I'm on to the next thing. And I think being nimble

34:06

and quick like that is not only underrated, but

34:08

probably is gonna become more and more important as technology

34:10

speeds up, which is like, to your

34:12

first point, also troubling

34:15

for me personally, because it's like I don't want half of humanity

34:17

to be left

34:18

aside, right? And to be forced into

34:20

these meaningless cog and a giant

34:22

machine jobs.

34:25

And it's not my responsibility nor would I even know where to begin

34:27

to like stop that from happening, it would be nice if

34:29

everybody was an indie

34:31

hacker, a creative creator, whatever

34:33

they like, but in some way found

34:36

what they wanted to do.

34:38

I don't want our society to turn into like the haves

34:40

and the have nots to turn into the people

34:42

who are fulfilled and the people who are being

34:44

used by the people who are fulfilled to be cocks. To

34:47

turn into, by the way, one of

34:49

the fathers of this mechanized

34:51

way of working, Frederick Winslow

34:53

Taylor, the quote that he had, his grand

34:56

vision was, in the past,

34:58

the man has been first. In

35:00

the future, the system will be

35:02

first.

35:03

Yeah. He didn't say that like the science

35:05

fiction, this is gonna be a fun thing. He was dreaming.

35:09

Yeah. And then here we are. Yeah. So

35:12

if we talk about something

35:14

as different as obesity,

35:16

we see the systems

35:18

problem. That people

35:21

made a lot of money

35:24

persuading a significant portion of the population

35:26

to become obese,

35:28

even though it's not healthy, even though some

35:30

of those people don't want to be that way. And

35:35

other people

35:36

tried to figure out how to insulate themselves

35:38

from those systems

35:40

so that it wouldn't afflict them. And

35:42

we see this in any

35:46

free market economy around the world

35:48

in so many ways. That

35:52

doesn't mean we have to accept that

35:54

it happens. We have to start building

35:57

guardrails, so it doesn't happen. Who

35:59

gave up? gets to build the guardrails, community

36:02

organizers do.

36:04

People who connect the others, set

36:06

the agenda, and amplify the ideas.

36:09

And we believe it's

36:11

top down. It's never top down.

36:13

It's from the foundations up.

36:15

We get what we tolerate. And

36:18

so when we start addressing what

36:20

kids are taught when they're five years old,

36:22

when we start addressing what people

36:24

are paid when they go to work, and everything in between,

36:26

the

36:27

systems begin to change.

36:30

And they're changing too slowly. There's

36:32

way too much trauma. But they only

36:34

change because we persist.

36:36

And so you saying it is so

36:38

valuable.

36:39

And then the question is, how do we do it, and do it, and

36:41

do it, and do it again? Because we're not

36:43

going to save the world by speculating with

36:45

Bitcoin. But we might save the world

36:48

if we can create a resilient open

36:50

database that keeps track of things

36:52

so that people can own actual assets

36:54

going forward.

36:55

So they're near each other, but they're not the

36:57

same thing. Right. Well,

37:00

I think this is essentially your

37:02

book. When I look at the description of it, it's kind of

37:04

like a

37:05

save the world book. I would love to

37:07

know your perspective on why are you writing this

37:09

book? What do you want to happen? But essentially,

37:11

it seems like that's the goal. Hey, let's all come

37:14

together and realize we have the power to make

37:16

things better. And here is maybe an outline of how

37:18

we do it.

37:19

All my books so far have rhymed. If

37:22

you pick up

37:23

Survival is Not Enough, a book I wrote in 2001. If

37:27

you pick up The Icarus Deception, a book I wrote 10 years

37:29

after that,

37:31

many of the same themes keep coming up. So

37:33

I haven't saved the world yet, because

37:36

I can't save the world. But what I can do

37:38

is activate people

37:40

who are looking for shared vocabulary.

37:43

And you never know when the right

37:45

time and the right places to have the conversation.

37:48

So I persist. But

37:50

I'm not alone in persisting. It

37:53

used to be much lonelier to have these conversations.

37:56

I got kicked out of the Direct Marketing Association.

37:59

1997 for arguing against spam.

38:02

They're

38:04

like, we're a direct marketer. Spam is a

38:06

good thing. You're out of here. We

38:08

will argue for spam. That's crazy. And

38:11

like this was in the US Senate. I was testifying

38:14

and there were other people from my industry saying I

38:16

was an idiot.

38:18

So you just speak up

38:20

and the beauty of all of this is you,

38:22

everyone has a microphone now,

38:24

you don't need authority. You don't need a license. You don't

38:26

need a huge track record. You just

38:29

need to organize some people, which is

38:31

exactly the same thing that the

38:33

indie hackers have to do to make a living.

38:35

Which kind of customers are you going to organize

38:38

in a way that the ratchet

38:41

moves forward? So, you know, another thing that I could imagine

38:43

doing if I was a software person today is

38:46

build a simple app

38:48

that let me, if I worked for any

38:50

big company,

38:51

find out the difference between what I'm getting

38:53

paid and what I should get paid.

38:55

And I could imagine plenty of people

38:58

who would happily pay $50 for that report,

39:00

particularly if they could walk into their boss with that report

39:03

and get a $5,000 raise. Many

39:05

tens of thousands of people are riding, scribbling,

39:08

you know, aggressively. You know, you

39:10

get the idea is that you don't have to

39:12

just come up with a different way

39:14

to make a Google Doc. You

39:16

have to come up with a problem

39:18

that can be solved that isn't interesting enough for

39:20

a giant company to solve right now,

39:22

but is useful enough

39:24

that a customer wants to connect with

39:27

other humans or their data in

39:29

a way that they're willing to pay for.

39:31

To make this slightly personal again, you

39:34

just mentioned, you know, you were in

39:36

email marketing until it wasn't cool anymore until

39:38

it didn't align with your values. Then you were at, you're

39:40

onto the next thing. And that has happened a

39:42

lot of times. You're an extremely prolific,

39:44

not just writer, but I mean, you have so

39:46

many workshops and online courses

39:49

that sometimes it makes my head spin. How

39:51

do you figure out

39:53

once the, you know, just go to,

39:55

by the way, is it, is it gotten or go to, and that was another

39:57

question I had. My grandfather made it up. So

39:59

you can.

39:59

anyway you want but he always said go to

40:02

so that's fine with me. Go to when

40:04

you are tapped out on on one thing

40:07

do you have a process do you you

40:09

know do you go into the woods for for

40:11

a month and just meditate how do you come up with the

40:14

next thing to to work on?

40:16

So the great Derek Sivers and I'm

40:18

sure a lot of people listening know who he is reached

40:22

out to me when someone offered to buy CD baby

40:25

and I said

40:26

if you care about the project you need to sell

40:30

and he was sort of stunned at that

40:32

because everyone else had told him you know this

40:34

is your lifetime thing blah blah blah I

40:36

said by the time a big company

40:39

is coming in and willing to buy what you've

40:42

done

40:44

what they are saying to you is

40:46

you have higher leverage somewhere else

40:49

and so whenever

40:52

I start a project I am

40:55

very clear with myself where the dip is where's the hard

40:57

part where's the part where most people quit and

41:00

then I also have to think about well but when will

41:02

I stop because I am not going to be

41:04

running this thing in 40 years for sure so

41:07

what is that like so with Yoyardine which

41:10

I sold to Yahoo

41:12

it was

41:13

there was a moment in time

41:15

when we needed to raise more

41:17

money but the noise in VC

41:20

world was so loud that our competitors

41:24

were

41:24

selling what we sold for a quarter of a million

41:26

dollars for a dollar just to get big

41:29

and they had raised 80 million dollars and

41:31

we had raised five or

41:33

four or five and so for

41:36

me to raise a new round there would have been so

41:38

much dilution for me and my partners that

41:41

it would have taken us six years of hard work just to

41:43

catch up from that round so

41:45

when one of the people we were approaching for funding said

41:47

we'll just buy you I was like yeah

41:50

fine done done because

41:53

it was a really long 10-year slog to

41:55

get here and this is not

41:57

my family and this is not me this is a thing we

42:00

built

42:01

and my friends will still be my friends

42:03

and the people we serve we

42:05

can serve again.

42:07

And that

42:08

was one of the most difficult things I ever did.

42:10

It dislocated a lot of people I cared about.

42:13

But I learned from that.

42:15

You can't have it both ways. You can't launch

42:17

a new record album

42:18

and also keep touring with that album forever. Sooner

42:21

or later you got to say I'm making a new record

42:23

album.

42:24

Well you're also not doing

42:26

one thing at a time and then you know sort

42:29

of boxcar of consecutive projects

42:31

where you're only doing one thing. The blog

42:33

is an unstoppable force.

42:36

The books are an unstoppable force. You

42:38

released a hit book when you were doing Yo-Yo Dime.

42:41

So one thing that a lot of especially

42:44

indie hackers who don't necessarily have

42:46

to please their VCs and boards that

42:48

they like to do is think about all

42:51

of their activities as a flywheel where you

42:53

know one part is adding

42:56

to another part and is that something

42:58

that you do and if you do it are

43:00

you deliberate about it? Is it something

43:02

that I've heard you say where you kind of think about things

43:04

as blowing on a dandelion and you're like let's let the

43:07

pedals fall where they may.

43:09

How do you explain flywheels a little bit more because I love

43:11

flywheels and I feel like go for it.

43:13

It's good to see you back. Tell us what a flywheel is. Sorry

43:16

my mic dropped so I was gone for a few minutes. I have no idea

43:18

what you guys said but I jumped in on a good part. A

43:21

flywheel you can think of like a waterfall is like a straight

43:23

line. You do A then B then C then you're done

43:25

and you look back and you say oh that was cool but

43:27

a flywheel kind of feeds step C back into

43:29

step A. It's a circle so everything you do with

43:32

your business sort of pushes on a lever that

43:34

makes another part of your business easier or better

43:36

and more effective and it's hopefully an infinite

43:38

loop so you can just kind of push on different parts. So

43:41

the classic example is Amazon. They

43:43

sell things for cheap. Customers love them. Customers

43:45

love them. There's more customers.

43:47

There's more vendors you want to sell. There's more

43:49

vendors you want to sell. Amazon can sell stuff for

43:52

cheaper.

43:52

Right and it just feeds around in this infinite circle

43:55

and a lot of people don't realize is that as

43:57

an entrepreneur even as a freelancer you can

43:59

have a flywheel too.

44:01

You don't have to, but it can. And so, yeah, I'm

44:03

curious to see if you have a flywheel and you think

44:05

about producing stuff. I

44:07

had a record album for a couple years and

44:10

one of the groups

44:12

that I produced lived in

44:14

a van. There were two of them. They were a couple

44:17

and they would drive into a town

44:20

and find the coffee shop

44:22

that would book anybody

44:24

if you just walked in.

44:25

It wasn't open mic, but it was close and

44:28

they might make 40 bucks.

44:30

And then they would get in the van and drive to the next

44:32

town and do it again.

44:35

And I turned to them and I said, you need to stay

44:37

in one town and go from the

44:39

$40 to the $80 to the $200 to the $1,000 gig because

44:41

this driving around isn't

44:45

getting you where you want

44:48

to go. You're just doing the easy

44:50

ones. So

44:52

the two things that I would say are, one,

44:56

the flywheel that I have found is the most

44:58

useful

44:59

is the one that earns you the benefit

45:01

of the doubt,

45:02

which gets you more benefit of the doubt, which

45:04

gets you more benefit of the doubt. So

45:07

when I was in the book business, I got had nothing

45:09

for a year and then people started returning

45:12

my calls and then they would go to lunch with me because

45:14

I kept showing up. And

45:17

so by the time I did the Stanley Kaplan

45:19

test prep books, they paid a silly

45:21

amount of money for them because they trusted

45:23

me because I'd been showing up for four

45:26

years. Whereas when I briefly

45:28

showed up in the film industry, they're like,

45:30

we got people fly by here all the time.

45:32

Check back in after you've failed 40 times

45:35

like, all right, I'm done this. Right. And

45:37

so that's the first thing. And

45:39

then the second thing is

45:41

resistance is real and you need to

45:43

write down on a piece of paper

45:46

what is the very, very hard

45:48

thing

45:49

that if it happened,

45:51

your project would work better.

45:54

Go figure out now,

45:56

what are the steps to make that hard

45:58

thing happen. So

45:59

When I used to run the

46:01

podcasting workshop with Alex the pama

46:04

People say well my pockets will go great as soon as

46:06

I can get Michelle Obama on the podcast

46:09

I like yeah, but you call Michelle Obama. She's not

46:11

gonna say yes, so

46:13

Who would you have to have had as a guest before

46:16

that? So that she'd say yes.

46:18

Oh Madeline Albright. Okay. What do you have to get

46:20

to get Madeline Albright? Oh war criminal

46:22

Henry Kissinger? Okay And you work

46:25

your way back until not my next-door

46:27

neighbor My next-door neighbor is the first guest

46:29

and the 12th guest is mission

46:32

or the hundredth guest, right and

46:34

People hated to write this down.

46:37

They hated it because they wanted to just believe

46:39

in lightning And so what

46:41

makes the flywheel useful is?

46:45

the beginning of Amazon

46:47

My mom who died shortly after he started

46:49

it Ran a bookstore in Buffalo

46:52

and she gets a call from someone in Amazon They

46:54

probably had 30 people at the time

46:56

and they said we see here

46:59

that you sell this book

47:01

Blah, blah blah for $100. It's an art book

47:04

Can you mail it to one of our customers, please?

47:06

We will send you $150 to cover the book and the shipping

47:11

Now there's no way Amazon could have made money

47:13

selling that book that way, right? But

47:16

they needed to be able to say we have every book in the

47:18

world and we will sell them So they made

47:20

a hundred people that day really happy

47:22

and then a month later 400 people the

47:24

flywheel before

47:27

AWS was

47:29

Do people trust Amazon?

47:31

How do we do that every day because once

47:33

I had bought? 400 things

47:36

from Amazon if they screwed up the 401st order,

47:38

I was fine cognitive dissonance. It

47:40

was an error Yeah, but they had to get

47:42

to the point with their flywheel where

47:44

they could have could pull that off Which

47:47

is funny because it's very it's almost

47:49

the same as a flywheel you're talking about using for yourself It's

47:51

the benefit of the doubt flywheel what they're doing

47:53

is they're they're building more trust Basically

47:56

a bet a brand that says you can trust

47:58

us to come through. We're here

47:59

for you, and I don't know, I mean that's the same

48:02

flight wheel that we're trying to do for Indie

48:04

Hack, because I got a paper here somewhere where I've drawn

48:06

this flight wheel like a hundred times, and Channing probably hates

48:08

me because I keep showing it to him every day, but essentially the best

48:10

component in there is like, do people trust us to

48:13

do what we say we're going to do? Seth,

48:16

we're out of time, we've just hit the limit

48:18

of your time, so I want to respect it. Thanks a

48:20

ton for coming on the show. Can I ask you one

48:22

more question before you get out of here? You can't ask me a question

48:24

until I point out that you're superstars,

48:27

that I am in awe

48:28

of what you're building, and this was such

48:31

a great conversation. Thank you.

48:34

The question I asked at the end of the show is, you've had

48:36

a long career, you've obviously

48:38

dispensed probably 10,000 different

48:40

pieces of advice over your career. What is something you think Indie

48:43

Hackers, you'd like Indie Hackers to hear today,

48:46

something that could take away from your journey, your learnings, your

48:48

career, maybe something related to the book

48:50

that you're putting out next week?

48:52

The shortest blog post I ever wrote. You

48:54

ready? It's also one of the

48:56

most popular blog posts I ever wrote back when I used to

48:58

check my stats.

49:01

You don't need more time,

49:03

you just need to decide.

49:06

Love it. Shannon, this applies to

49:08

us. Yeah, we're talking all

49:10

the time about how we don't have any time. Seth, thanks a

49:12

ton. You're a superstar. Hopefully we're going to have

49:14

you back when your next book's coming out. Even

49:16

before that,

49:17

put it in your calendar. I can't wait to come back. We'll

49:19

talk

49:20

to you.