#214 How To Produce Like A Linchpin By Understanding Your Lizard Brain – with Seth Godin

You listen to my programs because I don’t do the cute “let’s get to know the author” interviews that others are known for. I hunt down information that you can use because I’m passionate about helping you build a business that your great-great-grandkids would admire you for.
That’s why I kept digging in this interview. I want you (and me too, frankly) to be able to produce the kind of hits that Seth Godin keeps cranking out, seemingly without breaking a sweat. Not only has Seth created 2 big hit businesses, but he’s a writer who keeps introducing ideas that shape the way people think.
In his new book, Linchpin, Seth talks about how to be this prolific. As you’ll hear in my interview, much of it is based on opening up your creativity and learning how to confront your fears, which he says come from your “lizard brain.” Imagine what you could accomplish if you were able to do that. Listen to the full program to find out how.
Seth Godin’s latest book is Linchpin. You can buy it here or see what others say about it on this Squidoo lens. He also writes the world’s most popular marketing blog. And is the founder of Squidoo.

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Andrew: Before we get started I’ve got to acknowledge the support that I get from Grasshopper, the virtual phone system that entrepreneurs love, from Shopify, where you go to create an online store in minutes and from RichWP.com where you get a new theme for your website that you can customize. Guys, really thanks for all the help here with these programs. Alright, here’s the interview.

Andrew: It’s Andrew Warner, founder of mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstart, and Seth Godin is the author of several business books and the world’s most popular marketing blog. He’s also the founder of Squidoo, the publishing platform which Quantcast says has over 15 million monthly visitors, his latest book is called Linchpin. I’ve invited him to mixergy to talk and teach some of the ideas from the book. Seth, before I even ask you any questions about it, first I have to thank you. The first time you did an interview with me I remember one of my questions for you because my audience was just tiny. One of my questions was, why are you even doing an interview with me, but I internalised the message that you gave here when you talked about tribes and how to build it up, and how in the early days of building an audience you just have to deal with the fact that’s it’s going to be you and one other person, and be grateful that other person’s there, and how to build up, and I did and I did and I did, I’m now looking at dozens of people who are watching this live on mixergy even though the hour happened to be changed, they’re still here, who thousands of people are going to watching this interview, and an audience that’s just so supportive and helpful, so thank you for getting me here and for getting everyone else who listened to that program here too.

Interviewee: Well sorry I have to disagree that thanks go to you Andrew, I mean leaders are in short supply. You stood up, your risked people laughing at you, you took a shot and people are eager to follow you now. We own you a thank you, so thanks for showing us how it’s done.

Andrew: Thank you and you know what, I’m glad that you brought that up. People laughing at you, there’s so many times that I think, who’s watching my interview, right now, with Seth Godin and seeing this dopey-dope Andrew with his little webcam operation, what’s going on here? And one of the messages in this new book, in Linchpin, is to find a way to get rid of those voices right?

Interviewee: You know the voice is the problem. Let’s talk about the opportunity first because if we lead with the problem people turn us off. Here’s the opportunity, the opportunity is that the industrial age just ended. It lasted for 200 years, the cotton gin, the assembly line, interchangeable parts, Henry Ford, the TV industrial complex, interrupting lots of people was spam, and average products for average people, and compliant cogs working in the factory, doing what they were told. I can go on for a while. We all grew up with it, it was our lives. You sit in school in a straight row, number 2 pencil filling out little circles, no stray marks, what’s that about? It’s about training you to work in the factory. And then all of a sudden the race to the bottom ended. It ended when you could buy a barrel of pickles at Walmart for two dollars. It ended when you could go online and buy anything in the world cheaper from someone else. It ended when Ford Motor Company laid off 10,000 innocent people that didn’t do anything wrong, but they lost their jobs because they’d followed all the instructions. And so, with all of that pain, where’s the opportunity? The opportunity is we’re now rewarding individuals who make a difference. We’re now celebrating leaders. We’re now seeking out people online and off, who make things by hand, or keep their promises, or challenge the status quo. So the question that the book asks is, why don’t you do that? If it’s so valuable and so fun and so rewarding why don’t you do that? And then we get to your question Andrew, which is, what’s with this lizard-brain thing? What’s with the being afraid of being laughed at? Why is it that people are afraid of public speaking, and afraid to apply for a job off-campus, and don’t know what it’s like to live life without a resume? Well there’s good evolutionary reasons for it, but they’re obsolete now, and so I’ve been pontificating, I’ll stop…go ahead.

Andrew: No I’m actually, tell you what, let’s lead into, because I think I kind of gave away the villain before I showed the hero of this story. So let’s spend a little bit more time about, what we get if we can recognise these powers, because when you say make things by hand, that seems to me kind of small time. I’ve got these big dreams, these big ambitions, and I don’t see how making these works of art by hand is going to get me there. When you say that we’re all taught to confirm, and to maybe work in the factory, I don’t see that in myself, and I don’t see that in my audience. We want greatness for ourselves, don’t we?

Interviewee: OK, first let me clarify what I mean by make by hand. Google was built by hand. In 1999 or 2002 there was no book called How to Build Google for Dummies. The model of how you build an organisation used to be quite mechanised.

The transcript for minute 5 till minute 10 is BELOW this line.

Intervierwee: How you build an organization used to be quite mechanized I have an MBA they taught it to me and its worthless, none of the steps are true anymore. That the way you build a 37 signals now, the company that’s kicking Microsoft’s butt, is by hand. The way that you build a political movement is by hand. You can’t go back and look at how Barry Goldwater did it, or how Richard Nixon did it and copy the manual; because the manual doesn’t work anymore. That’s what I meant by hand, not carving tiki things..

Andrew: …and when you say that we’re artists, that we’re making things by hand, we need to be creative now. I’ve got to tell you honestly, because you and I, keeping honest with you here, that scares me and doesn’t make me feel like I can do it. It doesn’t make me feel like I know where i’m going to go. When things are business, when things are numbers I can sit and I can plan them out. When you tell me ‘Andrew, you’ve got to be an artist’. Artists? Those are the people that I laughed at my way up the latter, right? Those are the hippies who are going to make things, be creative who are never going to go anywhere. So now if I want to be creative, and I don’t have the mindset of an artist, how do I do it?

Interviewee: Well, let me again be really clear about my work. Pablo Picasso was an artist but so was Bill Shakespeare. But so was that guy, Goldman ???, who figured out that speadsheets, that when used a certain way, created a billion dollars in value by combining certain kinds of securities in a certain way. Never been done before, changed things. What artists do is not paint. What artists do is put together things, see the world as it is and make change happen. And yet, almost all of us were raised to fit in, follow all the instructions, and be compliant and it’s very hard to overcome it. Now i’ve been living that life for 30 years and failing almost every day at it. Lucky for me, the world changed, reorgainzed, and made it so being noncompliant is actually benefitial. So what I know for example is when I want to launch a book, the more agita I cause my publisher, the better the book’s going to do. So if the way the book is written, the way the book is packaged, and the way the book is marketed – the more they hate it, the better the book’s going to do. Because if I just fit in and follow, there are 175,000 books going to be marketed this year, why pick mine? You won’t. So, I think you’re selling yourself a little short, Andrew. You may be pretty good with numbers, I don’t think

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