If there were more people heeding Seth Godin’s call to ignore the ‘normal’ and embrace the weirdos, we’d be working in a very different world to the one we’re in today.
It’d be one where the traditional business hierarchy – which sees individuals do whatever possible to pass off their own personal responsibility for decisions made – has well and truly been broken down.
It could even be one where typical business power isn’t fundamentally still the domain of white men — as it currently is in the standard markers of such influence, especially across director, CEO and senior executive positions at our largest employers.
And yet with all the tools we need to develop great ideas now at our fingertips, Seth Godin’s world of visionary leaders and game-changing ideas is very much a world that could exist today.
This week, the visionary marketer and author of 17 books has been sharing his vision at a number of events run by Business Chicks across the country. He’s done so in front of an audience, unsurprisingly, that’s been largely dominated by women. Many of whom are already running significant and disruptive businesses of their own.
Women’s Agenda heard him speak at one such event in Sydney, where despite the construction noise and warm weather in the temporary Darling Harbour dockside conference facility, the mood took on a festive-like feel as Godin took to the stage.
He shared how we can use the tools we have available to create our own tribes, build successful brands and consequently change the nature of business and work as we know it.
Below were some of his key tips:
Seven words: People like us do things like this.
It was this seven-word mantra that underpins everything Godin had to say on how and why we develop and lead on ideas, and become part of tribes that ultimately determine how we spend much of our time and money. “If you stop trying to make average stuff for average people, it opens all sorts of different doors about what you ought to be doing all day.”
What change are you trying to make?
Don’t simply recreate something that already exists and build your business on the back of a price war, advised Godin. After all, you might just find yourself winning the race to the bottom. Build ideas and products that change people. For Apple’s Steve Jobs, that meant changing some people into people with better taste about digital goods. For Harley Davidson, it was a matter of changing people from outsiders to insiders, bringing them into a lifelong and loyal tribe of Harley Davidson believers. The best marketing conversations you can create are the ones you don’t pay for.
Be the person who makes thing happen.
“The best time to build an asset was 15 years ago. The next best time is tomorrow,” said Godin. Be the person who takes the risk and creates the change. Godin shared his own example of raising money for the company he started back in 1995 that invented internet marketing. “I had to persuade investors that one day everyone would have an email address.” He did, and now we all do.
It’s the story you tell that matters.
Forget the facts, it’s the story and the assumptions a brand can lead us to make that determine our relationship with it. “According to blind tasting, the only difference between a $300 bottle of wine and a $50 bottle of wine is $250.” It’s the story you choose to believe about those bottles of wine that really matters – and the logo that provides a placebo effect regarding what the brand can deliver.
Create remarkable conversations by giving people remarkable things to talk about
A great idea won’t reach everybody, but what matters is if it reaches “people like us”. The key challenge it to make a remarkable thing that people will talk about. Forget the “normal people” who are ignoring you anyway and appeal to the weirdos on the fringes.
It’s the weird people who do things first.
They’re the early adopters. The people who create trends. The individuals who find strange and innovative tribes to be a part of – especially in using disruptive ideas like Uber and AirBnB. Some such ‘weird people’ will pay $15,000 to compete in a triathlon in Hawaii, noted Godin. Others, like Godin himself, will pay good money for a box of three mismatched socks (and a business called Little Miss Match is actually offering such a product, turning over $40 million in revenue last year). “It’s easy to roll your eyes and say, ‘this isn’t real’. But all the stuff that’s real – the boring stuff – has already been done and it’s not working like it used to.”
The barriers to entry are gone.
Once upon a time television was limited. It gave advertisers a captive audience. That’s no longer the case with the internet – and the fact brands like Uber and AirbnB have evolved without television highlights the fact the way we market has fundamentally changed forever. “The internet destroys the perfect and then it enables the impossible,” said Godin.
The blank page terrifies us. Admit it.
“There’s no such thing as writer’s block. We invented it 75 years ago,” declared Godin. He noted it’s an excuse we use as a convenient way to hide. We worry that if we write something down, our words will be used against us – and so we avoid it, blaming a lack of inspiration in the process.
We’re all one click away from each other.
And that means that when it comes to the business of ideas, it doesn’t matter where you live. But the challenge is creating ideas that other people want to see – and to ensure they’re able to find you. This is what it means to be a human in the post-industrial world.
And three clicks from everything we need to know.
So why are we teaching kids to memorise facts? Asked Godwin. Why are we encouraging kids to stick to the status quo, to solve problems we already know the answer to, to ensure they ‘fit in’?
Creating ideas is like making art.
Making art means doing something that has never been done before – with no manual, and no guarantees that it will look particularly good. The tools you need to create the art are readily available. “We have a shortage of two things in the world. People who know how to and want to lead and people who can solve interesting problems,” he said.
We’re all afraid of freedom.
Sticking out and leading is uncomfortable. Following procedures and guidelines is safe. The fear we have of freedom is not something that will go away. “All we can do is acknowledge that it exists and use it as a compass that says we’re moving in the right direction,” he said.