711: Seth Godin - Creating Tension, Solving Problems, the Savannah Bananas, Leading Without Authority, Using AI, Hidden Entanglements, and Getting Unstuck (The Knot)

Ryan Hawk (0:00)

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Welcome to The Learning Leader Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Go to learningleader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to learningleader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, one of the greats, Seth Godin, has written more than 20 best selling books, including Purple Cow and The Dip. He has posted on his blog every single day for more than 20 years. Talk about consistency. Before the blog, before his books, he founded Yoyodyne, one of the first internet marketing companies and sold it to Yahoo in 1998 His new book is called The Knot, Problems Can Be Solved. During our conversation, we discussed why Seth is always early to every single meeting. Then, what Jackson Pollock's collapse teaches all of us about wanting two things at once. Then he shares how to build a quote, generous failure muscle and Seth closes with an amazing story about what he learned about leadership from being a canoe instructor at summer camp. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Seth Godin.

Seth, man, it's so good to see you again. Welcome back to the Learning Leader Show.

Seth Godin (2:29)

What a treat, the one and only. How are you, Ryan?

Ryan Hawk (2:33)

So I've had you on a handful of times over the past 11 years. In every single time, you show up early. You are remarkably consistent when it comes to being early. Why is that?

Seth Godin (2:45)

Well, I guess if I'm consistent, I'm not early anymore because if I then start showing up on time, it'll look like I'm late.

Ryan Hawk (2:51)

No, but I mean, it's a real thing. A lot of people in your position, they show up maybe right at time or a little bit after and you never do.

Seth Godin (2:59)

It's a courtesy. I don't understand why someone would willfully waste somebody else's time.

Ryan Hawk (3:03)

Well, I really, really appreciate that. I love the new book and I want to open with a story. So about 2,000 years ago, a monk in Northern Italy twisted some dough into a shape, boiled it, baked it, and offered it to his students as a reward for paying attention to their studies. You write that the genius, it wasn't in the dough, it was in the way the monk baked a story into it. What's that story?

Seth Godin (3:30)

Well, there's a knot in the middle of a pretzel. And unlike real life, you can't have a pretzel without a knot. And if you try to undo the knot, you just end up with crumbs. So there's irony in the symbol.

What actually happened is that I love designing book covers, and the cover of this book was going to have some rope on it, because when you think of knots, you think of rope. And I played with more than 100 variations of rope knots, and all of them looked banal. They were too on the nose, they were too obvious.

And so the notion of the pretzel came to me as this visual indicator of what it's like to feel stuck. So I created what I think is the perfect pretzel. It's hard to actually get a photograph of a perfect pretzel because pretzels don't usually photograph as well as you'd like. But then I needed to make up a story about why I picked the pretzel that wasn't what I just told you. So in the back of the book, I added a story about the monk in Italy and the three circles. How does this help somebody? What's getting in the way? And whatever the third circle stands for. But that came after I figured out I wanted a pretzel.

Ryan Hawk (4:36)

Oh, how do you find these stories?

Seth Godin (4:41)

So once you have a pretzel and you're trying to teach somebody, this is what I do with everything, is you say, I have a metaphor, I have a simile, I have an example. How do I make it so that when it sticks, someone will teach themselves? Because the only kind of learning that really happens is autodidact self-learning.