Akimbo podcast transcripts

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==> -paying-for-stamps- <==

Nobody tells a better story about ancient Rome then the great Steve pressfield and what I learned from his new book is that they had the post office in ancient Rome that you could send a letter. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about stamps and open apis, but first here’s a Message from our sponsor.

Hey, it’s Seth. I wrote a new book. It was originally called trust yourself. But my editor persuaded me correctly to change the title to the practice. If you’d like to see a free excerpt in a summary visit trust yourself.com got to do something with that domain check it out. I well, it’s not quite true. You couldn’t send a letter. Well, at least I couldn’t send a letter the post office.

Idea of sending a letter across the Roman Empire was only available to people who the emperor permitted to send letters that the Romans built extraordinary roads. They spent a fortune connecting all the way from Jerusalem to Rome and Beyond a network of roads that connected far-reaching countries that had never been connected before and one of the things they did on those roads was they created the post?

And the post was a relay of ten or twelve Riders each waiting for the next one a giant relay race to enable a message or a passenger to move from one place to another at really high rates of speed it enabled travel safe fast travel for the first time in human history. And while you were busy taking passengers, you could put in your sack otherwise known as a male a bunch of Hers. So here we have the Postal Service postal because you’re using the Post Road and the mail because you’re putting it in a sack.

And so the emperor could send a note to his soldiers for example in Jerusalem, and it would get there in a matter of weeks. Not a matter of years, but I asked Steve. Where did you go to buy a stamp? And that led me down the rabbit hole of well, you really couldn’t buy a stamp. Because the post wasn’t an open system not only couldn’t you look up someone’s address particularly easily because people didn’t have addresses but there wasn’t a way to pay for what was going on and then hundreds of years later Rowland Hill wrote an influential article in which he showed that postal rates were too high that the cost of the postal service was mostly a fixed cost the fixed cost of all of those. Mailboxes and all of those postal delivery workers and that if we lowered the cost of stamps we would end up with more people sending more letters and the post office would still make a profit.

What does this have to do with you and with me well the post office today of course carries junk mail catalogs the occasional absentee ballot, but mostly the post office of today is email. An email seems to be free and that’s a problem. It’s a problem because if it’s free, you’re not really the customer and it’s a bigger problem because it was free.

There’s a crisis of the commons that if it doesn’t cost anything to send a million emails and you make a dollar doing it. Some people people who are questionable about their ethics and morals will go ahead and send a million emails so they can make it. Dollar which leads to the travesty of Gmail run by the Monopoly Google Gmail is free. It’s beautifully designed. It seems to work a lot of us use Gmail. But as I stated earlier emails filled with Spam it’s filled with Spam because it’s an open system where the stamps are free programmers call A system that we can tap into an API. It’s basically a programming interface that lets someone who is not part of of the organization put something into the system an email is one of the biggest oldest open apis.

Anybody with an email account can send an email to anyone else without permission. This is a significant dynamic in the way the system works because it’s the recipient who Bears the cost of filtering sorting and reading the email. It’s the recipients platform that has to hold the email but it’s the sender can send the email for free and profit from doing it.

So back to the problem with Gmail. Some of you have heard me rant before about Google’s decision to build a promo folder. They built the promo folder so that people who were using a permission asset the privilege of sending email to people who wanted to get it for free would be hampered in there. Bility to do so, so if you’re used to getting emails from a catalog company you buy from you may have discovered. They’re getting stuffed into the promo folder not because you asked for it, but because Google realized that making it hard for companies to reach people they wanted to reach would make it more likely that companies would buy ads it was in their interest as a monopoly to break things like blogs and email that they don’t make money from to force people. Bow to you something. They do make money from which is interrupting people with ads on Google and saw the promo folder is a bit of a disaster.

It’s a disaster for the recipient who can’t figure out where my blog went who can’t figure out where that catalog went and it’s a disaster for the sender because they rightfully belong in your inbox. You asked to be in your inbox and Google a third party, you’re not even paying to be part of this transaction has moved them to the promo folder.

But I actually today wanted to rant about the spam folder spam folder is a bun. It’s a gift. I was there at the beginning of spam in the late 1980s early 1990s. There were Usenet discussion groups. These were basically a synchronous chat room for people could talk about something they were interested in like stamp collecting or chess and in the chest discussion board to Shady lawyers.

Posted a note promising unsuspecting immigrants that for a few hundred bucks. They could get you a green card. This obviously has nothing to do with chess unless you’re a grand master who had somehow ended up in the United States and needs a green card. It cost these lawyers nothing to interrupt this conversation about chess with their selfish add about scammy green cards, but they did it and then they did it in other places. Is over and over and over again?

And that was the origin of spam Usenet threatened to break under the weight of all the spam because like the expression bad money chases out good as soon as it Community starts suffering from a little spam. Some people say what the heck and add more spam and so it spirals out of control because there’s no way to stop the bad actors.

So spam filters came along two decades or so ago. And at the beginning they were pretty rudimentary but they’ve become more sophisticated not as sophisticated as they should be given a eyes state-of-the-art, but still they are pretty good. Perhaps 95% 99% accurate at determining that that spam really is Spam its email you didn’t ask for its email. You don’t want it disappears into a black hole.

Well in the last week two different speaking gigs, I was involved in disappeared into the black hole of spam in the middle of a conversation. And with dates and calendar reminders, where am I supposed to be? Where’s the zoom link gone disappeared into the spam folder. And once there are false positives in the spam folder it becomes toxic because now you have to read the entire spam folder to discover.

What’s there? That’s not supposed to be there. This isn’t just happening to me. Google didn’t seek me out, but it is happening to a lot of people stuff. That shouldn’t be in this man. Boulder is getting put there just like stuff that shouldn’t be in the promo folder. He’s getting put there.

So what does this have to do with stamps? Well in 1998 shortly after I got to Yahoo! It occurred to me that the problem was spam was that the stamps were free and in that moment in time between AOL and Yahoo, at least a third of all the email that was going to consumers in the United. In other places was going through these two surfaces.

So I came up with the idea of charging a penny for a stamp if I could get Yahoo and AOL to both go along with it. They could keep track of how many emails a given individual or organization had sent into their systems. And if they sent more than say 50 or a hundred in a day, they would block them until these people started paying a penny and email it could either be a At Center or you could give that money to a cause that would perhaps counter some of the carbon that’s caused by email.

So if you’re only sending 50 emails a day, it would be free if you’re sending a hundred emails today, which is a fairly large amount of means you’re probably doing something commercial it would cost a dollar. But if you’re one of those people is sending a million emails a day, you’re clearly sending them to people who probably don’t want to get them and so it would cost you $10,000 a day to send that many. Emails there’s all sorts of refinements that could be added. For example, if both sides actively opted in perhaps you don’t have to pay a penny if you get spam complaints, there’s no amount of pennies that you’d be allowed to pay. Suddenly the fact that you have to pay even a penny for an email makes you non-anonymous.

It makes the API a different sort of API one that is done with consent of the people on both sides. So it is open in the sense that anyone who’s willing to play by the rules can use it but it is not open in the sense that it will get wrecked in the Commons because Anonymous people can selfishly exploit it.

Well, I didn’t push hard enough and we never got the system in place, but it feels to me like right now when email is threatened once again by the overwhelming number of emails that are going back and forth and as we are just finishing a political season. I can tell you how he’s getting more than 300 a day just from candidates asking for money candidates. I never once asked to reach me in this moment particularly when people like Gmail dominate the market it may be time to revisit this it may be time to realize that the interactions between and among people in the open API. We call email could be improved simply by thinking about how much a stamp. Amp costs 200 years ago and thousands of years after the Romans started it Rowland Hill ushered in the Modern Age of philately and the Postal Service.

He did it by helping people understand that stamps were too expensive and lowering the price of a stamp could transform the way people communicated with one another leading to modernity in many ways. but right in this moment, it’s pretty clear that the cost of an email stamp is too low and that charging any amount once Mo lien which we can Define as a hundredth of a penny might be enough that what we have to do is make it non-anonymous make it thoughtful and establish a trail so that people who send stuff that is Spam can’t do it anymore that we can accurately label where they go and that someone like Google Uninvited stopped moving the email that I really need to read to a folder. I didn’t ask them to move it too.

So yes another rant, but I hope this one resonates and makes us think about whether the apis we are building our open and whether fully open is better than mostly open. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from last time, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

If you want to learn to ride a bicycle don’t watch a video don’t read a book. Hey, it’s Seth and I’m here to talk about the akimbo workshops. These are interactive real-time online workshops that work and we’re devoting 2022 finding one that matches where you need to go if you’re ready to level up. I hope you’ll check out akimbo.com to find out about our proven effective workshops.

It’s Maria. Except my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is on the part of this Caitlin.

Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Whoosah. Hi, this is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question as you know, I do love to hear from you if you’ve got a question about this or any other previous rant. Please visit akimbo dot link. That’s Aki and Bo dot link2006 click the appropriate button. Here’s a great question to get us started taking exception to something I might have said last time.

Hey Seth, this is Shawn Mabry calling in once again from Claremont, California, and I am calling to respectfully disagree with your answer to a question in the most recent episode. So one of your listeners had called in as about his decision to pursue a career in Creative coaching and he was asking, you know, do I need to have a impressive list of accomplishments under my belt before I started doing this creative coaching work and you identified correctly that he doesn’t need to be the Michael Jordan of any particular craft before he starts doing creative coaching work and ultimately the most important proof of his career will be the success of his students and I agree with that part the part I disagree with is the implication. I heard that you can be a successful creative coach without any creative practice of your own.

Thank you for all you do. I’m a huge huge fan have been following you for years and I can’t wait to hear your response. Thanks Seth. Yeah, we don’t disagree.

I don’t think we disagree at all. The fact is it is possible to teach people things that you are not. Great at for example, you can teach people how to swim even if a physical disability prevents you from being able to swim on the other hand the entire point of being a coach of people who seek to be creative is that it is a practice available to everyone. So if I wasn’t clear last time to clarify, yes, you have to have a creative practice all of us do but particularly someone who is there to coach Us in how to have a career? Of practice but no you don’t need commercial success.

And that is a very different standard commercial success in most Fields is not a measure of whether someone is good at teaching or not.

Hey Sam, this is Bill hyejin, Austin, Texas said, I have a project. I’m working on to make a difference in the world. I said I know who it’s for and what it’s for but the other day when I was listening to a podcast you through in a third criteria, which was how do you know if it’s working? I may have misheard that or not remember to clearly but that really got my attention and that’s really my question.

You know, it’s I’m running into some headwinds. I didn’t expect.

So, how do I know? How do I know if it’s time to give up? How do I know if it’s working? And I think that’s it. I really appreciate the work you do. I look forward to hearing back from you sir, bye-bye.

This is a great question. Thank you for sharing it. How do you know if it’s working because it’s working doesn’t mean the same thing as it worked. Its working are signs of progress means it’s worth continuing but it doesn’t work until much later in the process. So the Dilemma that so many creators face is the signals are all mixed up at the beginning people. Who care about you push you to drop it.

To get a real job to stop doing things that are wasting your time. And so the signals are all messed up. We don’t hear a lot from the people we seek to change about the change. We’re making actually working until much later in the process. So part of what it means to develop a practice to be able to do this work is to figure out which signals you’re going to pay attention to so back in the day when I was beginning my book packaging work inventing books. Book publishers.

I got rejected a lot 800 rejections in one year, but over time the rejections began to change they went from a form letter to a thoughtful personal response to a warm response to a lunch each step along the way. I was still getting rejected. There was no money coming in but I could tell something I was doing was beginning to resonate with people. I was learning I was Changing what I was doing. I wasn’t battering the market over and over again with the same message.

So what we seek to do is find the smallest viable audience. What’s the group The Right group that you need to Target to work for to be generous to and then what are the signals short of overwhelming success that let you know that maybe you’re learning something. Maybe you’re getting better at what you’re doing.

So I can’t tell you what those signals are but Can encourage you to look for them because the people have come before you have looked for them and they have persisted because I don’t believe it’s productive to say I’m going to ignore everything and stick with this forever because sometimes that works but it usually doesn’t it said this is Mike in Toronto Canada.

I recently completed a Myers-Briggs personality test and found the whole process and conclusions quite interesting. It’s quite common for psychologists or counselors to issue these tests and use the results.

Results as a lens for considering and recommending new career Pathways and opportunities or they can be used as a tool in relationship counseling that helps improve communication and understanding between partners though after going through this process. There was something alarming about the results in that I didn’t necessarily want to be defined or limited by the qualities and attributes for a certain personality type felt the touch fatalistic.

But on the other hand a lot of those qualities For Better or Worse seem to be quite accurate. So my question is aside from any general comments on personality types of quizzes is what are your thoughts on trying to dig into understanding one’s own personality as a means to help us navigate the decisions and choices. We will encounter in the work that we do or even what work should we do?

Thanks for all you do. I’ve really appreciated and gained a lot from your books and podcast cheers.

Thank you for this and thank you for teeing up my rant about personality because personality is real and personality can change personality informs our culture and our culture and forms our personality. So yes, it is helpful to get some insight about what turns us on and what doesn’t what we naturally dance with and what we don’t but as you pointed out it shouldn’t be a trap.

It’s one thing. To read a horoscope and to think wow this sort of resonates with me maybe this works but it’s another to believe that it’s the one and only truth that it’s too easy to get hooked on generalizations and think that they are about us and immutable but they are not immutable these are tools and we can use them as leverage to get to where we want to go.

So break my heart if someone got trapped into thinking that they are only entitled only Open only able to do a very small range of contributions to our community. It’s just not true, but too often were Paralyzed by fear, and even a horoscope gives us just a little bit of confidence. I know that we can do better than that and the way we do better than that is by doing the work and then feeling motivated not the other way around.

Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible. Or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution.

You’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up when you got a face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you got to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. Look, it’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -lots-of-questions- <==

The cool thing about knock knock jokes is that someone always says who’s there? There’s a question and then there’s an answer and today and all question episode to wrap up season 7 of akimbo. Hey, it’s F and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second with answers to eight of your questions. But first here’s a message from our sponsor Hi spend it at you.

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It’s an absolutely Be life-changing for me to see stories everywhere and to see my own stories.

I was surprised that the learning was as much in the giving is in the receiving we got to not only learn about storytelling.

We actually got some practice using stories in our everyday life. The biggest shift. I’ve found is now my own stories and the stories that I really want to tell are bubbling to the surface. I can’t stop seeing them whether you’re just starting out or you’re an experienced.

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Hey Seth, my name is j. I’m from Cambridge, Massachusetts. I’m from a long line of teachers and although I currently make a living as a digital content creator and I do teach a lot of students online through workshops courses public speaking podcasting you name it whenever I bring a lot of the ideas that I’ve learned through digital education.

Or that I’m learning through people like you whenever I bring these ideas to my family full of traditional Educators. They bristle and I think in part a bristle because who are you Seth or Jay to not be from our world and to be proposing how we do our work. So obviously there’s a misunderstanding and a better way to package the information, but I’m curious how you would go about winning over traditional Educators who are Jaded by the administration who believe that folks in Tech or online entrepreneurs have this Cavalier way of supposing they know the best solution.

How would you start winning over evangelists in the more traditional world of education? So to start thinking better about what education should be thanks for kicking this off.

You’re pointing out something about marketing as much as you’re pointing out something about education, which is that it’s very difficult to change someone’s mind and it’s really hard to lead without enrollment and so in every Killed when new ideas arise there are people who view those new ideas as a problem is a threat as silly as not worth their time because the new ideas might be unproven because the new ideas don’t match the way they see the world and mostly because new ideas bring change and change brings uncertainty and if you like things the way they are if you’re comfortable with your status and you have a sinecure place that feels safe change. JH is not your friend.

And so yes, you are right people in Silicon Valley are insanely Cavalier about just about everything. They think that problems are easily solved and they’re almost always not easily solved and the plan never works out the way they expect there’s no business plan that any company has ever created that matched what actually happened in the real world, but that wasn’t the heart of your question the harder your question is how Do we gain enrollment from folks who aren’t on board and the answer regardless of whether it’s education or not is we take responsibility and give away credit.

We Model Behavior and let other people follow that many people who have earned the right to be in front of a classroom who have their masters who have paid their dues who understand the ins and outs of the system aren’t signing up to say, what’s the Innovative new thing I can do. Now that the pandemic has shifted everything upside down instead. They’re wondering how are things going to get back to normal?

They’re not showing up at school ready to take a risk. They’re showing up at school eager to do their job the way they see their job. And so the opportunity of insurgents of leaders of people who want to innovate is to show up in a different way to model the behavior not to insist that other people change but to go first and when it doesn’t work explain what didn’t work, And take responsibility and when it does work, let other people take credit because they’ll grab that idea. They had quote all along and start to use it as well.

This is the way every system changes. This is the way education will change as well. We need folks like you who are out there in the front lines experimenting innovating because as we will see in our next question, the world really is upside down. Thanks for doing this work.

Hi Seth. This is me. Mariah from New York and here is my question. I have three children two of whom are in elementary school second and third grade and a 14 month old the virtual Learning System is quite a challenge for us. We navigated as best. We can visiting the online apps completing assignments and attending Google meets with the teachers this fall we have been on a hybrid schedule on Virtual days. I am balancing my time between my business their And managing care for my 14 month old a new positive effect of school is that teachers seem to have more freedom to be creative. They use outdoor classrooms and incorporate more game playing into the day and it feels very natural and more open to new ideas and curriculum more challenges arise on the virtual days in trying to guide them into the virtual meet the teacher trying to converse with the kids online and messaging the assignments to accomplish and then the parent dissipation participation being an awkward Edition for all of us The children now see my partner and I at our computer so often an alliance between work and home life are now very blurred.

We’ve spent much of our parenting years limiting screens at home. And now it seems as though we are all in front of our screens more than ever. Listening to your past podcasts on the education system and your recent podcast about Zoom Sebastian’s I’m curious to know your thoughts on how the system could evolve for the better.

And what can help these school-aged children the youngest population specifically and these times of virtual exchange. Thank you for all your sharing and insight. I was a designer and Acumen a few years back and I followed you ever since thanks again. Thanks for this.

Your kids are really lucky to have you this pandemic has turned so many things upside down not the least of which is schooling particularly for young kids because parents particularly to Couples, but all parents are dealing with the challenge of having to do their work having to make a living at the very same time. They’re trying to raise their family the best they can and so parents regardless of whether they’re single or double income whether they’re doing it on their own or in a team are under stress. They’re under stress because they’re trying to make a living trying to do their work at the same time. They’re trying to do the best job. They can of parenting and many people are working at home, which is It is really stressful because what it really means is you’re living at the office and so boundaries are hard doing two things at once is hard multitasking doesn’t really work and kids kids need us and so how to handle all of this. Well, the first thing that I would say is you’re doing great and you need to cut yourself and your family a lot of slack because we built this system based on a steady state. We optimized it for a hundred years organized around. School buses and apples in the lunch box and all the rest of it and all of that got disrupted.

So there’s no way it’s going to be the same as it was there’s no way that we’re going to be able to relax into the existing system because we haven’t figured out what the existing system is yet, but then the second thing that I would share with you is this the real opportunity here if you’ve got an eight-year-old or six-year-old or nine-year-old is not to teach that kid how to get into college not to teach that kid calculus.

The real opportunity is to teach kids to learn to learn to learn to get along with each other to be able to understand that you can’t say you can’t play that what we are teaching kids to do before even Middle School is simply the act of projects of inquiry of cooperation of executive function of metacognition thinking about thinking These tasks have gone by the wayside because we tested the things that were easy to test.

So the opportunity whether or not you keep your kids home whether or not they take a gap year at the age of eight is to help them understand that spending the day with a coloring book is absolutely fine. As long as you do the best you can with the coloring book. Nobody needs you to do great on a standardized test when you’re eight, there’s no function there. It doesn’t damage. Straight any ability for the future but self-directed project-based learning.

That is something we can teach a kid from a really young age from the age of three. There’s a difference between completing a Lego kit by following every instruction and completing a Lego kit by building what you want to build but finishing it finishing it and make it something you’re proud of and doing it in cooperation with someone else that project-based self-directed learning is something we can teach our kids and it turns out that the fact that you can’t sit next to them. The whole time is a plus because what we’re trying to create is an environment of curiosity and inquiry and the idea that the kids can do it themselves.

So no, we’re not abandoning them. But we’re also not saying you must comply and you must get ready for the test. There’ll be plenty of time. For that right now, we’re teaching you to learn to learn. Thanks for this question.

My name is Leroy and for nearly two years.

I’ve been creating a business based on something identified with a demographic group that I’m a part of, you know, remarkable was pretty difficult to come by but through new voracious studies and practice. I believe that’s him there and this Is part partially based on the reactions to those? I share my story on my products with.

Problem is I’m a bit afraid to go to market. Although I have everything in place including a bit of funding. I’m afraid that I will not be able to keep up with there’s an initial surge in sales on a website. How can I prepare for this how do I he’s myself into the market as a one-man operation will have to design design the graphics. I design most of them already and print them and gar makes men’s and on and another merchandise.

And is this I know how Kickstarter comes in and I’m not insured. Do you have any advice and you know I can ease into the market. Thank you so much. Thanks for the for you. Work man.

Oh, I totally get the feeling of not being ready and I can understand why you are hesitating because this Parts really juicy. This is a really good moment to be in you’ve done your planning you feel the potential you see the opportunity. The next step is fraught pressing that button that says ship it’s fraud. But if it doesn’t ship it doesn’t count and shipping to the market will teach you an enormous amount. Out mostly it will teach you that nothing you planned on worked out the way you expected.

It will teach you that while some people won’t be able to get enough of what you did. Some people won’t get the joke and you’re going to have to iterate and iterate and iterate the analogy I’ve got for you. The best one I’ve got is you can plan for a really long time your trip to the Grand Canyon. But until you start going to the Grand Canyon when you hit detours when you realize the car needs gas when something comes up, The way that is when you’re actually taking a trip to the Grand Canyon, so whatever project or service you’ve got in store.

I’m imagining it’s of service to people it’s generous. It’s going to help them get to where they’re going. So don’t hold back bring it to Market a small Market don’t launch it on some national TV show Bring It to 10 people if they tell 10 friends each you’re on your way if they don’t you’ve learned something important.

And then you can cycle and then you can cycle again this cycling. That is the work. The planning is fun to planning is important but the cycling that’s the work.

He said, this is Dayton from Salt Lake City USA. First off Kudos on all to MBA becoming a b Corp.

I think that’s amazing. But my question refers back to the episode the zoom Revolution, where in your List one was on gamification of interactions using the zoom technology. Were you implying in that particular one that that the use of this technology creates a meritocracy something that something like what Bridgewater is doing now?

Anyways, thanks really love the podcast.

Thanks for this Dayton. Yes, you’re ahead of me. As soon as the industrial entities get their hands on a new game. They can invent they will turn it into a game that can be played mostly to their advantage. And so the example of Bridgewater is a fine case people who go to work at Bridgewater our competitors, they like to win and so the game that’s created at Bridgewater is a game not with board pieces in Chutes and Ladders.

But with competition with scorekeeping with apparent transparency and a lot of competition and so yes gamification of meetings is inevitable. And the question is will we Embrace games that make us feel good. They get better creativity out of the meeting that use our time more efficiently or will we become victims two games that benefit other people, of course, that’s a up to us, but we have to see it coming and part of the reason I made that podcast episode is so that we could see it coming.

Thanks eisah.

This is Gwen calling from Los Angeles. I have a question. It’s about the last episode about the zoom Revolution. I am a food photographer and I was thinking of starting a zoom group for other food photographers to discuss the same problems that I’m having us.

Lancer in hopes that maybe they have something to say about it or some wisdom on the topic and my question is if I’m looking for people who have are having the same issues as myself. Can I just make it for people like me and not think about who else would be interested in this?

That’s my question. Okay. Thanks.

Bye it is a great question in the answer. Of course is yes. This is the only group you can organize that a group that says anyone who wants to join the group join the group isn’t much of a group if it’s generic. The goal is to be specific to be particular to be peculiar to say, it’s just for people who are in this moment of their lives.

Now, there are lots of variations of what those people are and whichever And you pick is yours. If it turns out no one joins. Well, you haven’t lost anything but if the wrong people join, that’s the problem so we begin by identifying who the right people are. Thanks for this Laura.

Hey Seth, this is Jared from Melbourne Australia. First up want to say thank you for the work that you do. You’ve been such a big part of fundamentally transforming how I view my role in its culture in work and in mark getting I’ve been thinking a lot lately about ratchets these mechanisms that we build into our culture an entire economy that drive our outcomes in a particular direction.

You see I’ve mostly heard you talk about ratchets in a really negative sense before and I’ve been really thinking about ratchets and how many positive ones I could see as well as about how many negative ones of saying And your episode in the game theory of carbon was the most positive I’d heard you speak about them and it’s inspired from that. I really started thinking well shiny building really really good ratchets that have the kind of outcome and consequences that we want.

Is the most powerful thing that could possibly be doing to change our culture and create the kind of outcomes that we want to have so I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. And if that makes sense, I would love more on you from you about how we create ratchets that give us what we want.

This is a great Point Jared and thank you for giving me a chance to chime in here. Yes. I completely agree that the network effect and ratchets and Game Theory are the engines of our culture change and they have been for a long time and what we’ve learned from the Internet is that the network effect the idea that something works better when other people are using it turns out to be the thing that can change our culture the most quickly to get an idea to spread the effectively, and so if I haven’t been clear when I point out negative examples of this, I’m trying to do that to highlight the pitfalls of Doing It Wrong of doing it selfishly of doing it for the short term and hoping that we can lay the groundwork for how we can persist with positive ratchets and there are so many in our lives that people are healthier than ever before that’s a ratchet because when you are surrounded by people who are healthy you are more likely to You want to be healthy and we could go through a long list of things that spread in that way turns out that for a long time organized education was a ratchet that turned in One Direction and it was the disruption of the internet and the idea that quick hits race to the bottom talking about stuff that isn’t true just because it gets you a click that disrupted a long long ratchet toward rational.

Measured scientific method thinking and so yes, I do believe that there is an enormous opportunity in front of each of us in our own circles to create these opportunities. I mean if we go all the way back to Alcoholics Anonymous, which is about as low Tech a tribal organization tool as you can imagine, it is also one of these ratchets, so it’s right in front of us. We’ve just got to decide we care enough to do something about it.

Hi Seth. This is Adam from Oxford in the UK.

I really enjoyed your recent podcast on the zoom Revolution.

I was struck by your optimism on how this is revolutionizing the way we collaborate and how this will transform how we work together in the future. I’m really interested to hear your views on whether limits for Creative teams using these tools are today and what the theoretical limits are in the future.

I’ll use an example of one of the highest achieving creative teams in history The Beatles could John Paul George and Ringo and producer George Martin? Have created a masterpiece such as Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band remotely and further to this what if they had never met and not spent thousands of hours playing together in Hamburg Germany in the early years bonding whilst on tour on tour buses and in hotels could the intangible magic of happened another way.

Thanks Adam a question that integrated The Beatles and zoom has to be a good one. I think the thing that gets in the way of creative teams using these new technologies is fear. And momentum, there’s nothing about the technology that causes it to be magical or causes it to be non-magical the telephone enabled far more conversations between editors and authors.

Then ever would have been possible a hundred years earlier. I don’t think we point to the telephone and say the telephone enabled this book to exist but the fact is this book wouldn’t have existed without the telephone. Well now we’re multiplying times a hundred. And I’m remembering those classic Harlem Globetrotter moves that I saw when I was 12 years old and my parents took me to the auditorium in Buffalo to watch the Globetrotters play those no-look passes.

The complicated moves the backs in the fourths. The Globetrotters were one of the only teams that figured out how to do that in basketball because everybody else was so busy trying to score a basket as opposed to working together, but I think that what can happen in zoom and is already happening. Is a level of collaboration that we couldn’t conceive of even if we’d spent years in Hamburg playing in Smoky bars. So there’s something very special about shared hardship about shared magic that happens in person. I’m not minimizing it at all. I miss it a great deal, but it is also true that with proper organization and structure George Martin and John Paul George and Ringo could put together something. As magic if not more magic than Sergeant Pepper because at their disposal was a high-efficiency way to collaborate without all the cruft without all the arguments. So I believe that we are going to see an explosion of Cooperative creative work to get done by people who find each other not because they are geographical proximity not because they’re just down the street in Liverpool, but because they’re the right people in the right. Place at the right time who choose to enroll in a journey together to make something extraordinary at least.

I hope I’m right. So say I’m out. Yeah and then convicted as a sort of chipmunks.

We’ll be back in a second with two more questions, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Hey sup. Hi.

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My question is and that completes my question. Well, as you can tell from the previous questions, I do love hearing from you if you’ve got a question about This or any previous episode just visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki and Bo link2006. Click the appropriate button.

So at least for me, there’s a strong Pole to put thoughts on PowerPoint or video.

However, you’ve often encourage the use of memos instead.

My changeable.

Thought is has been that PowerPoint might have more impact and is more likely to get red, but perhaps not so I wonder if you control drill down a little more into memos when to use them and what you want to see in the memo. Thanks so much. Take care now.

Bye.

I totally agree that a PowerPoint or a video particularly a video can spread faster and touch more people than a memo if your goal is to control the narrative and to show up for a lot of people that’s the way to go. My new book will not reach nearly as many people as a blog post or a video will or even this podcast on a good day.

But I think the key element is controlling the narrative if you Video you’re telling us what you think if you’re standing up there with bullets in a PowerPoint. You’re telling us what you think you’re creating a deck. Here it is. This is what I had to say. But if you share a Google doc, you’re inviting us to go at our Pace to dig in to make suggestions to make comments to make edits.

It’s a different sort of communication. It’s interaction and writing which is only been around for thousands of years not hundreds of thousands of years is Different than oration, it’s different than making a video because writing the digital nature of writing only 26 letters available to everybody where people can chime in where people can look deeper and deeper. We don’t do that with a video. We don’t watch it three four five times we watch it and then we move on and so yeah, I love making videos and this podcast and yes presentations without bullets, but memos memos are designed for interactivity. An invitation for people to engage.

So I’m in favor of all of them. Hi Seth.

My name is Peter from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You talked a lot about being indispensable doing work. That would be missed. If we were gone. The question I have is for those of us that maybe are recent college graduates and we have an idea of where we want to go. What’s the distinction between, you know being a cog in a machine and And just paying your dues on the way to where you want to go.

Thank you for wrapping up this all QA episode. Here’s my answer the system. The one that pays us is based on scarcity industrialism often being a cog showing up and doing what we’re told doing it in the way that we said we would do it and an exchange getting what we were promised whether that’s will this be on the test and here’s an A or yeah, I’ll do this shift and then you’ll owe me 80 Dollars, so we need to do those things to pay the bills until our side hustle until our craft until that thing. We are bringing to the world. Our practice earns us enough trust that people want to pay us for what we do.

So I’m in favor of making sure you’re paying the bills. It’s just really important. You don’t get seduced lulled into a sense of security. By the industrial system and I’ve seen it I lived in the law school dorm for a year. I’ve seen what happens so many of these students show up at a fancy law school thinking they’re either going to do public interest law or get elected to the Senate and then the next thing you know, they’re grinding it out as an associate on their way to partner because the system the game is set up that they keep doing that and they have no time to pursue the activities that would make things better.

And so the purpose of the practice is to begin now. Not to quit your day job not to insist that the world show up with prizes when you first begin, but to have a practice a daily practice of regular practice of shipping creative work and you probably won’t get paid well for it at the beginning you might not get paid at all.

So yes, by all means keep your day job, but then over time Drip by drip day by day you make a contribution and if you make enough of a contribution if your particular enough peculiar enough, Most important remarkable enough people are going to figure out that they’re going to have trouble living without you.

Thanks for the work you’re doing thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right. Is it puts you. In a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason. Reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question.

It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -queuing-theory- <==

Here’s a seemingly unrelated trivia question to get us started name a word in the English language that has five vowels in a row in the middle of it. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second. But first here’s a message from our featured nonprofit build. Don dot-org check them out. They’re doing important work.

I’m going to start a chocolate because I believe the fight against poverty and illiteracy is a very big fight and it’s one that we need to be universally together in we started a chapter together and it proved to be a really great way for us to develop our leadership skills and get involved with a larger organization that would Empower us to change our lives in the lives of individuals around the world in our in our own Community what I took away from this whole experience.

Was that the more you give the more you get The harder I work to improve the lives of others the more I gave me a life changing experience in return Yes queuing has five vowels in a row.

And the reason it’s only semi irrelevant is this if you figured out the answer or even if you tried to figure out the answer the question is did you start with the word a and then the word a a and work your way all the way to Z back trying to find the answer? Probably not. Not probably your brain if it works like most people’s brains started scrambling its way through possible answers. We’re not exactly sure how the brain works, but we know how it works at a bank and we know how it works at a supermarket.

This is the idea of queuing theory and queuing theory is far more important than we think when it’s time to think about cultural revolutions first a example from a writer named John Dee cook imagine that there is a bank and it only has one teller imagine that it takes 10 minutes for teller to serve a customer and also Imagine That on average randomly customers arrive 5.8 an hour what that means if you do the math, of course is if they arrived perfectly spaced out there would never be a line because every 10 point something minutes a new Amber would come in and be served. However, they are not arriving perfectly timed. They are arriving randomly.

It turns out and this is stunning if there is one teller and customers arriving at this rate on average a customer will wait nearly five hours to be served. This is astonishing to think about I did the math. It’s true, even though the bank is only open. For eight or nine hours in a row and the first person doesn’t wait at all. The average person will wait five hours.

But if we add a second teller just one more teller, so there’s two instead of one instead of going down to two and a half hours. It goes down to three minutes a 93 x difference. Well, when we think about it, we understand why because usually there’s only one or two people waiting and that second teller completely eliminates that weight and lets the bank absorb the extra traffic where did queueing Theory start it came from the Copenhagen phone company as long ago as 1909 because if you’re going to build the phone company you have a queuing problem.

And the problem is you need operator standing by ready to move those cables to connect one phone to another and you need to make some estimates as to when People are going to want to make a phone call if three people want to make a phone call at approximately the same time and your goal is to have people be able to make a phone call when they need to make a phone call.

You’re going to need three operators. And before they figured out how to make phone calls automated. It was estimated that as many as half of all the women in the United States. We’re going to have to work as telephone operators to deal with the demand for phone call. When were thinking about queuing Theory we’re considering several factors.

One of them is how often does the next person who is going to demand service show up another one is how many people are there to serve the next customer and what we know is that different kinds of service offer different variations? If you go to a busy Whole Foods in Manhattan, what you will find is a Corral in which all of the customers wait in one line and then each person is allocated to the next available cashier what you might find at a typical Supermarket is you’ve got to pick your own line. And if you pick the wrong line, you’re going to feel badly because you always pick the wrong line researchers want to know about balking which is what happens if Customers see that the line is too long from outside the store and don’t even bother coming in jockeying which is what they call it. When you’re moving from Line to Line sure that you’re in the wrong line quickly moving to a shorter one thus making it easier for the person providing service and of course reneging leaving your cart filled with frozen food and walking out of the store in a huff these behaviors change the way that we do the math.

Also, the person is offering the service has to make a choice. Is it first in first out otherwise known as first come first serve. This is the way most of us think of as being the most fair or is it last in first out which means that the customer who came in the last get served first. This is a stock. This is what happens to the plates at the buffet line.

Or perhaps processor sharing can occur in which one service person can serve more than one person moving from one to the other. This is what happens when you’re in chat support online and you can’t figure out why it’s taking so long to finish typing their response. The answer is they’re working with more than one person or perhaps the organization decides to stack People based on priority.

Putting the most profitable customers first putting the most annoying customers first. Maybe it’s the supermarket deciding sort of perversely that the fewer items you’re buying the more likely it is that you will be in a short Line This is called shortest job first. And so what does this have to do with changing the culture the Insight is this that when a new technology comes along that blows apart queueing Theory?

It is eagerly adopted. So the queuing theory for buying an airplane ticket used to be you had to go to the airport or to the ticket Bureau. Wait in a line when there were only two or three agents servicing you and buy your ticket that American Airlines came up with the saber system, which was a timeshare computer that allowed travel agents to bypass the Q.

So now instead of waiting For an agent on the phone or at the ticket agency the agent could instantly look up a ticket without waiting long at all because the computer was doing processor sharing you still had to wait for your travel agent to be free. I remember 40 years later sitting in the travel agents office waiting for the person in front of me who I don’t know is going to Latvia or something to finally finish so I could sit with the travel agent.

Well, we all know what happened kayak in the rest of them show up and now queuing theory is irrelevant when it comes to buying an airplane ticket because there’s an infinite number of doors and there are no agents queuing Theory then shows up when it’s time to load the plane because the plane only has one door.

I’ll wait People’s Express came up with the idea of loading from the back and the front by having two doors instead. Of one they loaded the plane in no time, but maybe the plane could be loaded even more quickly Southwest Airlines got rid of reserved seats. Why? Well, one of the reasons is that the Panic that people have that there won’t be a seat for them, even though there’s always a seat for them means that people race onto the plane and sit down faster to make sure they have their seat.

Southwest Airlines deals with queuing Theory by creating anxiety or perhaps this idea which I’ve never actually seen done in practice imprinting on the carpet at the airport all of the seats so that everyone would go stand on top of their assigned seat on the carpet before they get on the plane so that then the plane could be loaded even more quickly but back to this idea of getting rid of the when it comes to serving people serving people with computers because processor sharing has now made it that you don’t wait for the Mainframe to get around to serving you what most lay people don’t understand about the internet is it is based on TCP IP and other forms of processor sharing that what happens is the signal that is coming to you with your email in it or whatever is on that webpage is thing from computer to computer to computer without ever having to wait in a line. Think about what happens when we order food in it used to be that if you wanted to get a pizza from Johnny’s Pizza in Mount Vernon, New York. There was only one phone.

So if you tried to call at a time when someone else was making an order you were out of luck. Now when we hook up the internet to restaurant delivery services and terminals, lots of people at the very He same time can get access to the information or ordering that they need I am not arguing that any of this is a good thing.

What I am pointing out is that it is one of the symptoms of a change in the culture the library the library has a line if you want to get one of the best-selling books put your name on the waiting list. There is no similar thing going on with the Kindle. Someone wants it on the Kindle. They can have it on the Kindle that what the internet has done is added processor sharing to queueing Theory so that almost all the time the line goes away, but umin beings you and being sort of like being online. Sometimes it wouldn’t be that difficult to engineer Disney World so that there wouldn’t be much of a line that you could blow through it seeing more rides in less time if they just coordinated everyone’s actions, but I don’t think it would be as fun.

My dad and I used to ski it Kissing Bridge in Buffalo New York at 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday. We were the only people there we never waited in a lift line up down up down up down. I’m not sure it was always more fun than the pleasure of anticipation of figuring out that you’ve earned something that what we are seeing in little tiny pockets of the internet. Is that scarcity creates value that rankings and queuing Theory?

Make people feel like they’ve gotten something special that one of the things that goes on in an auction, which isn’t quite queuing Theory but is closed is this you don’t have to justify how much you paid for something in auction. You just have to justify you paid a little bit more than the number two bitter and the story that we tell ourselves when we win an auction isn’t necessarily a story about what we paid or even what we got.

It’s a story about Winning a story about coming out ahead in the queue. So when we look at the next Innovation when we try to consider who is going to create value it might be worth looking at the fact that some Innovations blow up the line that adding that second teller gave us a 93 x Improvement and how long we have to wait in line and if we can make the line go away if we can serve more people. People if we can figure out how to do it with equity and dignity.

We might end up creating value. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with answers to some questions from previous episodes, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Half my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new product. This is Caitlin.

Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

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Hey sup. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you. Please bring on the questions. We’ve got plenty and backlog, but we’d love to Of dead yours as well. Visit a Kimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button some questions this time about creative work perfectionism and being adopted by the market. Here we go.

Hey Seth, this is Max from Brooklyn New York.

I just finished listening to your pursuit of perfection episode, and I had a question about the 10. Between shipping creative work and feeling like a hack doing it. So I’m going to spiring screenwriter and I often get to a point in editing my work to where I feel like we’re I question whether or not it’s good enough to ship one of the words to send out to people or whether or not I should keep working on it and a lot of times if I’m honest I feel like laziness can affect me and I will just get to the point where I will just say I’m tired of editing this thing. I just want to send it out and I send it out and I worry about whether or not that’s me just shipping out the work and waiting for the world feedback and getting started on the next thing you continuing to do that and showing up or whether I’m doing it simply because I just don’t want to do it anymore because I’m taking the easy way. Out and so I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Thanks for everything. You do.

Thanks for this Max. I think the key phrase you used was that your might be tired of it or that you might be lazy. And so we need to distinguish between perfectionism that happens because we’re afraid of digging deeper afraid of putting something into the world that might backfire versus the exhaustion that We get from polishing something to a high Sheen because in most Fields a high Sheen is required to get to the next level.

So here’s one way to think about it. If you could hand your editing work to a freelancer to someone who gets paid less than you and they could make it better. Then maybe you should because better in that case means more polished means following the instructions getting rid of the typos. Making sure that the jump Cuts aren’t sloppy that’s different than holding back the work you could do to make it more like you could do it only you could do it to push in that direction. Noticeably is not perfectionism. It’s the opposite. It’s bravery.

It is showing up with your voice for people who want to hear it and understanding the distinction between the two is really important. I know that Is ago I stopped trying to edit the last level of typos perfection in my books. I hire someone to do it. We’ve never even met John does a great job. I don’t do it. He does it and people don’t come back to me and say wait a minute. You spelled this word wrong that puts me further on the hook to be distinctive in the work in the writing and let the Polish go to somebody else. But if you’re in the Polish business and people are higher, New for Polish then.

That’s something you need to bring. Hey Seth.

This is Josh from Omaha as an author. I’ve self published a series of to middle grade books with a third on the way the kids that read my books absolutely love them. And so do their parents the problem is I can’t get new families to give my books a chance. I took your advice and created a free PDF to give away to my Facebook friends. But only one person requested it to lower the barrier to entry. I recorded an audio version of the first book and put it on.

Tube but it premiered to crickets. I also plan to release the book as a podcast, but I don’t have high expectations for its performance. My question is this is it worth putting in the effort to try and be curated by a traditional publisher in hopes. It will raise my status enough that people might give my books a chance.

I’ve had one agent interested in the series and I put three weeks of work into the business proposal only to be rejected in less than an hour with no further explanation. I’m willing to put in more of this type of work. I’m just not sure it’s the best. Of my time and energy. Thanks for everything you do and I’m looking forward to your new book.

Thank you for this and thank you for the writing. You’re doing a PDF is not a solution to most any problem. The purpose of the PDF is to make something easier to spread and if it’s not spreading there are a bunch of reasons why that could be finding a publisher who will curate your book and give you some level of status will only work with perhaps school librarians, but the typical reader has no clue who published a book.

So I’m not sure the question is how do I get a publisher? I think the question might be after 10 people read this why aren’t they sharing it? What would need to be built into the book to make it more likely that people would choose to share it. So when you say to your Facebook followers who wants a free copy and people don’t ask for it. It’s probably because there isn’t sufficient tension to get them over the hump.

I just listed something on eBay with a 99-cent open. Bid no reserve and it’s worth hundreds of dollars. Well two and a half days into it. There’s not one bid. Why isn’t there at least one bid clearly someone wants this thing for four bucks? Well, maybe not because in their head it might be well, it’s too good to be true at four bucks. It might not be what it appears to be and we go on and on cheaper doesn’t always lead to trial what leads the trials the combination of trust and tension and what leads to an idea spreading other people wanting to read your book is something that says this works better if I tell other people about it, so don’t give up persist but figure out probably in conversation with some of the people who read it possibly in conversation with people who haven’t read it.

What does spread what do they talk about what creates enough tension that people want to dive in? Our next question isn’t really a question. It’s a contribution from a great teacher who has something to say about you only live once and fear of missing out ice Earth.

It’s Howard from Hillsborough New Jersey. I was looking over one of your blog posts that spoke about fear of missing out versus knowing I’m missing out or fomo versus Kim. Oh it always triggers my mind to think of the other common expression of YOLO or you only live once that idea that if you knew you only had one week to live and how would you live that last week?

This is a concept I often hear my teenage students talk about when giving excuse to do something that is somewhere between foolish and brave one of the concepts. I’ve challenged them with is what if you turn this concept around and said Tolo tol oh and they ask what is Tolo I tell them to turn the tables and say what if you knew it was someone else’s last week and they didn’t know and you couldn’t reveal it to him.

They whoever they are only live once how would you treat that person Tolo is the only way to go Thank you for this Howard.

You’re right. They only live once is a posture changer. I appreciate you chiming in on this one. And one last question for today.

Hey Seth, this is Roger from Chicago, Illinois in a recent episode.

You mentioned something. I’ve thought about a lot over the years you were talking about how telephone companies will offer large bonuses or promotions to get new customers to switch over and maybe not reward customers that have been loyal to their Over the years I’ve often thought about Marketing in the sense and wonder why there aren’t more companies that reward loyalty.

So for example, maybe you start out paying $100 a month and then as some sort of time ticks on maybe it’s every year your monthly payment gets reduced down to some for to reward this loyalty. I just wanted to get your thoughts on that if you’ve seen it in the market or if anybody’s tried it or where I can change my cell phone plan to but I really appreciate your thoughts. Hope you’re well.

He’s a great Point David Brin wrote a science fiction novel years ago called The Practice effect and it imagined that the laws of entropy worked in reverse that the more you used to saw the sharper it got that everything in our lives could be improved with use which meant that in a society based on capitalism wealthy people would hire people who weren’t well off to wear their clothes and use their tools so they would be even better when they decided to use them. Em, so I got to thinking what would happen if marketers said The more you use it the less it costs until years and years into it when you’re using your cable or your phone service. It’s actually free what would happen if we did that?

Well, one of the challenges is switching costs that many marketers spend a lot of time working on lock in making it expensive to switch expensive to switch your insurance or where you live or your phone number and so we stick Is it and so the competitors need to lower their price to induce people to switch, but if you’re going to do that and you’re going to lower your price for people to stick there is no moment it which your price approaches what you need to charge. So what do we want all the way in the direction you’re describing.

What if getting started wasn’t cheap. There was no inducement or come on. However, it kept getting cheaper and cheaper. Well, if there’s enough of a network effect the Loyalty that you created by rewarding people for sticking around might lead to Word of Mouth and word-of-mouth plus Network effect could lead to lowering your marketing costs making it so you wouldn’t need expensive inducements and come-ons and if we think about it for a minute, we realized that lots of areas of our life where we don’t have to pay an annual fee things like Which tribes do we belong to the fact that you drive a Harley or don’t that you’re part of a spiritual?

Ocean where your status is higher. These are places where we do. In fact reward people for longevity and where the network effect leads to evangelism to Bringing other people in so it might be a breakthrough idea. You should name it after yourself. Maybe someone will run with it. Thanks again for listening.

Love to hear from you.

We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right. Is it puts you.

In a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason. Reason why we don’t write that book.

It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt nba.com.

==> -pay-the-writer- <==

37 years ago. I was in a jam. I had an idea for a book that needed to be written but I didn’t have a writer who could write it on a lark. I picked up the phone and called an author who it had enormous success just before that with a book called alien based on the movie Alan Dean Foster answered the phone and we work together on a book today Alan Dean Foster 75 years old. His wife is ill and Disney who publishes many of his books including his best-selling Star Wars novel has decided not to pay him anymore.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second. But first here’s a message from our featured nonprofit build on.org check them out. They’re doing important work.

But I took away from this whole experience. Was that the more you give the more you get The harder I work to improve the lives of others the more I gave me a life changing experience in return Harlan Ellison the controversial science fiction author who wrote some of the greatest Star Trek episodes in history is perhaps most famous for a rant.

He did about paying the writer. I sell my soul, but it the highest rates the highest rates. I don’t take a piss without getting paid for it. The question is why should you care? I’m a writer so I know why I care. but why should you care and there are two reasons for this but first a small aside about Alan Dean Foster Alan in addition to being a really good writer and a very nice guy made a living for many many years by writing science fiction novels based on other people’s TV and movie properties because it turns out writing a science fiction novel is not the same as writing a script it turns out that if you send Alan Dean Foster, Screenplay for your movie in a very short period of time he can send back a novel that might be a better novel than your screenplay is going to be a movie and this transaction the idea that the writer will write is fraught and it’s fraught for two reasons.

The first reason is that almost all writers are individuals small small businesses people without a staff. And when I was starting out as a book packager, I work from home like most people these days but few people in those days and at the beginning I went to Great pains to pretend I was in a busy office and then I realized people who write people who invent things like books aren’t supposed to be in busy offices that one of the things that we look for from somebody who’s going to come up with an idea that will change our culture is that it’s an individual.

It’s not a committee but In order for those individuals to do their work, they can’t be reliant on suing people all the time to get paid and so to support our culture for hundreds of years. We have erected a regime of copyright the whole idea that it doesn’t matter if you’re a giant multinational or not.

The deal is the deal and the deal has been straightforward for a very long time. It’s not negotiated because it’s part of the understanding. We’re a big company. We need an idea. We’re a big company. We need a book. We’re a big company. We would like to publish the thing you own a copyright in and so the small operator can focus on their work not on building a corporate institution that can play on an even playing field with other corporate institutions, which segues quite nicely into this idea of the rule of law that the Magic of our jurisprudence system is that we almost never go to court that understanding the basic rules. For example private property make it easier to coexist with one another could someone start planting corn in your front yard and then demand that you sue them sure they could but they don’t because it is understood that things work better when they are working not when bullies start suing people, but when we do what we say We were going to do when we understand the difference between exploiting something that isn’t ours and doing the work. We said we are going to do so, somebody had Disney not in charge almost certainly a lawyer said wait a minute.

I can come up with some complicated legal theory that might save this company $100,000 $500,000 here and there I’m going to go do it and if you don’t like it you can sue me and Alan’s case. They did offer to meet with him. But only if he would sign a nondisclosure agreement before the meeting, which is absurd nda’s after a deal is done make it easier to negotiate in good faith. But before the deal is even discussed that’s pretty much unheard of so what we’re seeing here is a series of bad behaviors on the part of a super profitable giant Corporation taking advantage of a single vidual back to Harlan Ellison get a call yesterday from a little film company down here in the valley and they’re doing the packaging for for MGM on not engine for Warner Brothers on Babylon 5, which I worked on and I did a very long very interesting on-camera interview about the making of Babylon 5 early on when Joe straczynski hired me and they want to use it young woman calls me and she says that we’d like to use it on the DVD can that be arranged I said All you gotta do is pay me and she said what I said got to pay me you said well, everybody else is just you know doing it for nothing.

I said, everybody else may be an asshole, but I’m not I said by what right would you call me and ask me to work for nothing. Do you get a paycheck? Well, yes. I says does your boss get a paycheck. Do you tell you pay the tell us any guy you pay the cameraman you pay the Cutters. Do you pay the the the teamsters when they slept the your stuff on the trucks then? How don’t you pay you as how would you go to a gas station and ask me give you free gas.

So Harlan’s Point probably a little too broad is this if there is no writer there is no Star Trek if there is no writer there is no alien book if there is no writer where do the ideas come from now, we have talked before on this podcast about how culture doesn’t work. If we have to pay every time we share an idea with one another ironically. I’m not paying Harlan for his to sentence rant here because I’m not using it. Commercial Way fair use is really important. I can’t comment on what he said without quoting him quoting culture back and forth to each other is really important.

The other thing we’ve talked about a little bit is the fact that copyright should not last forever. And again, ironically Disney has been in the Forefront of trying to make copyright lasts forever.

The reason they keep extending the length of copyright is because of Mickey Mouse. They even named the law informally the Mickey Mouse copyright extension act because when Disney is the owner of the copyright or the intellectual property, they and their Squadron of lawyers enforce it as hard as they can, but it goes in both directions. Actions and that is the key to this rant and the reason that everybody needs to care about it because it goes in both directions.

Our culture is based on our mutual Reliance on the rule of law that we can do a deal that isn’t 500 pages long with large escrow payments on both sides precisely because we understand what the words mean we understand what the terms mean the deals the deal. We don’t get to insist on renegotiating something simply because one side has more power than the other that the Creator should have the right to say. Yes and the right to say no and that once the deal is done.

The deal should be done. It doesn’t matter if Disney moved some corporate shell pieces around pay the writer. There are always going to be conflicts between fair use. How does this get used? How does this get shared when does money? Hands, does it even make sense to ask Harlan Ellison to appear for free in a DVD and the Bedrock principle of making a deal and keeping it that one of the things that we need to have to have rule of law is that when we lose we have to know we lost because we played by the rules when we won. We need to know we won because we played by the rules if the rules are always in doubt then. Everything will grind to a halt and fortunately for people who love Allen’s work.

The rules are in place. We got to read the books. He has written. We got the joy of the ideas that he has shared and going forward. We’re going to need more of those things more of that connection more of that creativity. So Bob Iger and the rest of the folks at Disney if you’re listening to this, you already know what to do.

And for the rest of us, let’s remember That a handshake deal works for a very important reason the more time. We spend papering over the deal because we don’t trust the other side the less time we have to create the culture that we all want to live in Allen. I hope your wife is starting to feel better.

And I hope that Disney cut you a check soon. And for the rest of us. I hope that we will be able to create the next chapter in whatever we want to build in this. This culture that is based on the ideas that are created by people who care. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. Thanks for listening will be back in a second with answers to questions from all over the world. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

If you want to learn to ride a bicycle don’t watch a video don’t read a book. Hey, it’s Seth and I’m here to talk about the akimbo workshops. These are interactive real-time online workshops that work and we’re devoting 2022 finding one that matches where you need to go if you’re ready to level up. I hope you’ll check out a Kimbo.com to find out about our proven effective workshops.

Except my name is Kyle reading sound.

This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is an apology – Caitlin.

Hi, sir.

Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any other episode or whatever is on your mind. And please visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo link2006. Click the appropriate button a huge range of questions came in. I’m going to do my best to get to them.

We’ll start with a speed round. Hi, Seth and Jason from st.

Paul Minnesota here quick question about definitions of terms. How do you define classes versus workshops versus seminars versus let’s say experiences. How do you define learning?

Versus education and finally, how do you define school?

What is a school in your opinion? Thanks for everything.

You do. Thanks Jason. Some of you have heard me talk about this before but here we go. The easy one the difference between learning and education learning is voluntary learning brings enrollment with it learning is usually informal learning is something that we want to do riding a bike is something we learn to do walking talking jug cooling anything where we are leaning into it exposing ourselves to momentary incompetence on our way to getting where we hope to go is learning education is a system of coercion. It is based on grades. If you ask the question will this be on the test?

You’ve just identified the fact that this is education you’re not doing it to learn it. You’re doing it to get a piece of paper to get through it to get to the other side education has a role. And it is possible to learn something while you are being educated, but we should be really clear about the difference between them. So during the pandemic lots of schools. Lots of compulsory education institutions have done something they call at home learning however, parents have instantly discovered is that at home learning?

It’s at home education. It’s butts in seats its tests and scores and proving. That you paid attention learning would be self-directed student-centered activities where we exposed ourselves to the things we wanted to learn and leveled up. So, where do we do education in the common vernacular we do it in school that’s different than a workshop where we work. That’s the point you are doing the work versus a seminar which in the business context might be Time away from work in the higher education sense. It’s the place where you are talking with your peers under the guidance of somebody who knows how to make it possible for you to talk and learn at the same time.

Thanks for letting me rant about that.

Hey Seth, this is Anton from Hamburg, Germany. In the preview of your latest book The Practice. I read that one of the most asked question on this podcast is the question. How do I find my purpose? How do I find my passion? And I too struggle with that question. I struggled finding my voice and finding a voice that is useful for the world that I want to represent and I heard you answer that question a couple of times and the answer you give them the book is it’s not about doing what you love. It’s about loving what you do.

But somehow this answer doesn’t lead to an aha moment for me. So my question is What am I hiding from? What is it? I have to see understand or realize too.

Understand that the answer you gave is the way.

Thank you for all the work you do and stay healthy.

Thank you Anton. And I hear you. The thing is that deciding that your purpose is in the work as opposed to seeking work that matches your purpose can be unsatisfying in the short run. It’s unsatisfying in the short run because there isn’t a lightning bolt from the sky a light bulb doesn’t go off over your head. You’re not suddenly fulfilled.

It’s a process it lines up a lot with the way some of the stoics thought about philosophy. Fee you can’t control what the world sends your way. But what you can control is your response or reaction to that and the same thing is true with the work we do I’m not talking about our hobbies are Hobbies things. We do for ourselves things that do not involve a promise to the marketplace.

Our hobbies are sacrosanct. Don’t wreck them by trying to turn them into an Etsy shop because it’s a totally different thing. But once you make it your Or work. You’re not doing it just for you you’re doing it for the people you seek to serve and that choice that grown-up commitment eventually leads you to the path of loving what you do because you can work at it. And as you work at it as you work on the practice, you will begin to discover that it’s better than not doing it.

It’s better at showing up with your arms folded saying well I’ll survive today, but I’m definitely not going. Feel engaged now I prefer the alternative which is choosing to be engaged with the work you’re going to do.

Hey Seth Abhishek here from Mumbai.

I’ve been reading a book the practice and you talked a lot about one way to defeat the ego and the get to work is to be generous. So think about the people that will benefit from the work. I find it quite easy to do when I when it comes to let’s say my day job where relationships my colleagues with my clients.

And even the eventual stakeholders who benefit from what I do, but what about more personal project? So what if what about the music that I’m trying to make or business? I’m trying to bootstrap which is very early stage and I just can’t visualize or think about who might actually benefit from this work.

It kind of feels like it’s a it’s a pretty selfish Endeavor because it’s something I feel like doing and I think about what I might personally gain from it. So, how do you how do I how do I become generous when I just don’t know who that person might be in the future who might benefit from this work.

Thanks.

Thank you have a check for this question and for your honesty as we just talked about your hobbies your hobbies can be selfish. They should be selfish there about you. That’s why you were spending time and energy on them. But that business you believe you should start that side hustle that you are working on. It is so much easier to get it right if you begin from a posture of generosity who wants to hear about this who would miss this.

You didn’t build it who eagerly will pay for it because they don’t want to wait in line somewhere else that when we can approach a business this way not simply to find a niche and fill it but to decide to show up to help people who are glad that we are there that opens the door for us getting the right answer.

The world isn’t even close to running out of unsolved problems. You just have to find one and commit to solving it and I’ll finish with this question, which I heard in a couple forms from a few people including one person in Malaysia.

Hey Seth, it’s Tony today is November 2nd. I read your blog post this morning, encouraging people to vote and habitual non-voters and it made me think of two things that have been on my mind one, you know if we’re making it as In here, but if we assume that habitual non-voters are not engaged in the process do we really want to encourage them to vote if they are making an uninformed decision and that goes one way or the other. It doesn’t matter if they’re going to vote red or blue or or up or down don’t we want engaged voters wouldn’t we want a hundred percent of engaged voters to vote? Not necessarily those who are unengaged and are just voting based on who they might have read the latest lawn sign or scene.

On TV. Thanks for all you do.

Thank you for this Tony. It is very tempting to try to make it so that only the right people vote so that only people who have done quote their homework vote the problem lies in who’s going to pick who’s going to decide Robert Heinlein who was a Visionary science fiction writer wasn’t a particularly good political scientist and one of his ideas with it only veterans should be allowed to vote.

Well we Up with lots of rules about who should be allowed to vote and inevitably making those rules always ends up worse than simply encouraging everyone to vote. The challenge that we have. I think is a Communications challenge which is what do people learn before they vote. And what do they learn as time passes in between votes?

And we’re not doing a very good job of that a we decided that profit-seeking mass media was the best way to inform people about what was happening and B, we decided that an unlimited amount of money could be spent by corporations and lobbyists to communicate to people what the issues of the day are I think rather than deciding who can’t vote.

It might be worth spending some Cycles deciding. How are we going to inform everyone how we going to lay out agenda? Aren’t simply about the crisis of the day about personal battles between one person and another how do we turn our narrative away from professional wrestling and focus it more on long-term chronic problems because informed correctly.

I trust the people around me we have way more in common than we would like to admit but we have divided ourselves that’s happened because of the game theory of of the best way to provoke people into donating money and taking action. I’m hopeful but not optimistic that recent events will help us understand that we need to do a much better job of organizing our culture the flow of information what it means to be people like us doing things like this how to get back to First principles how to decide that fighting among ourselves on this one and only planet that we have is The best way to make things better.

Thanks everyone for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right. Is it puts you. In a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you going to face the possibilities within you when you got to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason why Why we don’t write that book.

It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt nba.com.

==> -consolidation-publishing- <==

Newell Brands is a consumer facing conglomerate. They own ball jars and Sharpie and mr. Coffee. And if Newell Brands decided to buy paper mate or some other pain company The Wall Street Journal probably wouldn’t write an article about it. In fact, they do own papermate and a bunch of other pain companies.

Here’s the thing last year Newell, Brands sales were more than twice the size of eggwin Random House or as I call them random penguin and yet when bertelsmann the people who own random penguin decide to by Simon & Schuster It’s News. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about publishing Commodities monopolies and culture but Here’s a message from our sponsor.

Hey, it’s Seth. If you’re part of the group of advertising marketing or PR professionals who follow this podcast, you might not want to miss my keynote for the sharp spring agency acceleration series. Join me on December 10 to 12 p.m. Eastern for alive QA about the future of agencies sign up at sharp spring.com Godin the sessions are free and sponsored by sharp spring. There are Revenue growth platform with sales and marketing automation tools that help agencies grow.

Again that URL is sharp spring.com Goten. Hope to see you there.

It’s a rainy day here in Hastings on Hudson New York, but that didn’t stop me from making this podcast. I want to talk a little bit about our culture and the consolidation of the book business. Why is it news if a huge book? You’re the biggest in America buys another big book publisher from a different conglomerate what has shifted in the world that makes this matter or not matter.

Well, let’s begin with this book publishers have been running an industry for over a hundred years and the structure of the industry is based on a few facts. The first one is that books are returnable completely returnable. The bookstore can keep a book. Look for months or over a year and if it doesn’t sell they can send it back. They’ve made it ever easier for them to do that. They don’t even have to send the book back in many cases.

They can just scan in the code and it’s an honor System. Why would book publishers have such ridiculous policy they do it because the booksellers had a lot of power. They had a lot of power because there’s this scarce amount of shelf space. There’s only room for twenty Thirty fifty thousand books in a book store.

And there are hundreds of thousands of books trying to get in there. So what the Publishers realized a really long time ago is that their customer is not the reader their customer is the bookstore. That’s why you will not find random House’s phone number on any of the books on your shelf because they don’t want you to call them.

They don’t want to hear from you at all on the other hand. There are sales force knows my name every buyer at every book. A store that sells a lot of books the day of organized the entire industry around making booksellers happy. They have a long lead time. They had sales people who would go from store to store. They try to publish books that book sellers want to publish but you’ve already figured out the but one by one independent booksellers are under stress or disappearing and it’s all going to one company.

One company Amazon that doesn’t really care about books Amazon has built an institution that is good at selling everything but has no ability to sell any thing. What do I mean by that? Well, most retailers have Merchants Merchants are human beings who make decisions who have taste who decide what’s going to be in the front of the store and what’s not Merchants are the people who determine and that Pottery Barn feels different than Macy’s because they have put their point of view on display and Merchants had a lot of power at booksellers.

That’s because the books that got promoted ended up getting sold that one example of this is the work the gene Phi well did with her team at Scholastic. They took a big risk when they acquired Harry Potter in the United States and Harry Potter ended up being the most profitable. Book franchise in history because independent booksellers went out of their way to get precocious 10 year olds to read this new book from this unknown author hand selling. It’s called and this mindset that booksellers helped Publishers adopt is a mindset that Publishers brought to Amazon.

Let’s put our best salespeople on Amazon. Let’s figure out how to get Amazon excited about what we’re launching. Next let’s do all sorts of favors for Amazon because we know that Amazon will like that and then Amazon will promote what we do but the thing is Amazon doesn’t do that Amazon is simply an engine and algorithm.

It listens to what the market wants in the short run and it gives it to the market Amazon doesn’t buy 10,000 or 15,000 copies of a new book they buy a three-day supply of five days Supply if it sells they More if it doesn’t sell they don’t buy more the people who work at Amazon don’t have the levers to change things the way the people at other stores did years ago.

I retained the rights to the audio CD of my book The Dip I read it myself and I published it myself. I then made one call to somebody. I knew it Barnes and Noble and I said to them let’s do this. I’ll give you an extra big discount. You’ll put it. It in a big table near the cash register. It’s final sale will do one big batch. No reorders. Let’s go and we ended up selling tens and tens and tens of thousands of copies of a CD for not very much money Barnes & Noble knew it was a good deal for their readers because it was so inexpensive.

I knew that I could lay off the risk and I knew that Barnes & Noble through promotion would sell them all so back to this idea of consolidation. What is Publishing publishing is the hard work of bringing a new idea to people who want to pay for it publishing is not printing the logistics of printing are now available to anyone sure. It takes a little bit of time and some money but you’re not going to get out printed by Simon & Schuster random house or penguin. You can figure that out.

The hard part is to take a new idea and to figure out how to put that idea. Via in front of people who want to buy it. And so the old model was partner with the bookstore and then the bookstore will talk to people who just walked in to buy a book, which is the juiciest Pond filled with fish for someone who is looking to catch a fish. There are already in the bookstore asking what’s new? What should I read?

That’s not the way it works at Amazon. So now the question is Is it in our interest for Publishers to consolidate alert listeners know that I am no fan of Monopoly that once we start taking choices away. Once we let producers off the hook. They gained too much power that instead of asking what’s good for our customers.

They start asking what’s good for us because they can and so ideally what would be great for our culture for people who want to write and for people who to read is lots and lots of Publishers on equal footing bidding against each other with lots and lots of authors seeking to serve them and then lots and lots of sellers perhaps ten twenty sellers on the internet playing under Fair conditions all selling to compete with one another that is sort of an idealized free market scenario, but there’s a network effect and there’s lock in there. Once you own a Kindle. You’re going to buy your books on a Amazon once your inaudible listener you’re going to use your audible credits to stick with Amazon.

Once you’re in Prime doesn’t really pay for you to start looking at other places and pay shipping every single time. And it’s easier to just stay where you are. It’s more convenient and Amazon has kept up its end of the bargain so far by offering unlimited selection and the best prices on books, so it’s sort of Ideal for the reader you get the book tomorrow at the best price any book you want with free shipping and if tomorrow isn’t fast enough you can do all of those things inaudible or Kindle right now, but what this means for the book publishers is that without their partner the bookstore without Amazon willing to be their partner.

They have a challenge.

One thing the big Publishers are doing is they’re bidding against each Either for ads and promotion on Amazon because Amazon doesn’t care who buys the ads and promotions. They sell them to the highest bidder. Well if there are lots of bitters that’s good for Amazon bad for the bidders. So one of the big advantages of consolidating the big Publishers is they won’t bid against each other on promotion, but one of the risks that authors are happy to point out is one of the advantages of consolidating if you’re the publisher Or the shareholders of bertelsmann is you don’t have to bid to buy books from authors. Either that if an author only has one place to sell his or her book.

Well, then a dollar is the best bid. They’re going to get because take-it-or-leave-it. There’s no place else to go unless you want to publish it yourself. And so the Consolidated publisher will seek eventually to not overpay for the Starbucks now. Acknowledged so far that that’s not what they’re going to do. They’re going to treat each one of their imprints as a separate independent entity and encourage them to bid against each other for the star books. We will see if that continues number two, they can get more efficient at buying shelf space and promotion as I mentioned. They shouldn’t be bidding against each other to promote a book that forming a cartel that works together to lower.

Zones, upside will help readers and authors because it will leave more resources for things that are actually productive bidding up. The price of attention doesn’t help the reader and lastly the biggest shift the thing that they’re going to have to do that they’re doing slowly but it’s starting to work is permission marketing that I first wrote about this for the book industry more than 25 years ago.

I sat down with people and RG which is now a division of this giant Corporation and I said, you don’t know who your readers are and there’s a race to see who does and it turns out Amazon won that race. It turns out Amazon knows who all the readers are. They know what those readers want. They know what those readers like and if the book publishers don’t engage in that race, they will never ever have a chance of catching up.

But once they do know who you are and what you want they can cater to you. You the same way they used to cater to booksellers. Now, they need to start learning to cater to book readers to earn the privilege of delivering anticipated personal and relevant messages to readers who want to get them to connect readers to one another they’re capable of doing it in a way that will run circles around Amazon if they choose to because it’s this intent and interest and openness to news that enables.

A book publisher to redefine what they do. They’re not in the business of cutting down trees. They’re not in the business of printing books. None of them print their own books. They’re in the business of organizing readers of being a channel between the author who has something to say and the reader who wants to hear what that author has to say, but this is going to require a significant shift in how they see the world.

So the question is will a Consolidated company one. One that creates a balance with a Consolidated seller that new entity. Will they be willing to rebuild their business model at the same time? They’re trying to run their existing business because Newell Brands knows that people are going to keep buying Sharpies and they hope that people keep buying mr. Coffee and ball jars and they are succeeding not by changing our culture, but by creating a brand that people trust but book publishing. Like that because nobody knows who publishes my book and nobody knows who publishes any of their favorite authors what we care about are the People Like Us who are reading books like we are reading and what we want is to be connected to them.

Thanks for listening to my rant and I still think they should call the company random Penguins. We should write romance novels.

You know what your problem is. You’re not proud to be a penguin proud to be a penguin. Why are we even called penguins? What does it even mean? It’s a great name for us. It’s not so on the nose. What would you rather be a ran? You know why they’re called Rams. These are more mobile than us. We can’t do anything. I’d rather be a sea lion than a penguin. You know how many sea lions die young from too much smoking and drinking trust me. We’re not missing out on anything. We age better than almost any animal on the planet.

You’re right Jimmy. I haven’t been appreciative enough now you’re getting it.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with some answers from questions. Previous episodes, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

Seth my name is Kyle reading Seth.

This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump. This is Caitlin. Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question got four great questions to dive into here as we approach the end of the year. If you’ve got a question about this or any other episode, I hope you’ll take a minute to ask. It does visit. Akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo link2006. Click the appropriate button.

Hi Seth. This is read talking to you from Denver Colorado.

I’ve been catching up on my akimbo backlog recently, and I’ve just got to your Zoom Revolution episode from October. You’re 18 points really resonated with me, but it brought up a question that I asked a lot of my And when they start to ran about Zoom calls just being a worse version of meetings.

So how do individuals like them who are generally younger or less tenured people and their organizations change that culture of meetings, especially when it’s driven by more senior individuals who are unwilling or unable to shift away from what they know. I’m excited to share any suggestions you might have with them.

Thanks for your work. I’m looking forward to listening through all the new episodes.

Thanks for starting us off read here is the confusion there is a difference between people changing things and letting you off the hook versus taking action taking responsibility giving away credit and watching the world change in this case Zoom is being misused. It’s being misused by most organizations who are dealing with a The status and control people are working from home, but they’re worried that people aren’t working.

So they are using zoom in the worst way meetings as enforcement meetings to make sure people are putting their butts in their seats meetings to make sure you’re behaving these meetings are enervating. They are sucking the life out of us. We sit there all day when we could have gotten so much more done if we had just used in a synchronous method of communication.

Like a shared doc or slack so what to do about it? Well The Young Turks whippersnappers the people who see A Better Way Forward should have their own meetings peer-to-peer start using it properly engage with one another in a productive way that gets enormous amounts done in very short periods of time and then when the boss finds out give them credit let them steal what you just Tilt the world will change but just as it changed for email just as it changed for websites just as it changed for diversity. It changes from people who are doing the work not from the top down.

Hi Seth, it’s Ross here from Cape Town.

I have a question about research. So I’ve in my career at various stages. I’ve actually my job title has been a researcher, but I did a Bachelor of Arts degree and and and a master’s in arts. But throughout my school career. I was never actually taught.

What it meant to be a researcher or how to research properly.

I always felt that I was missing a trick. So I’m very curious about your methods whether it’s a science thing whether I should have been an engineer if I wanted to be a better researcher if you had any any insight into the research process, I’d really be curious to hear about it. Thanks a lot. I love your work. And I’m going to read your new book. Okay. Cheers. Bye bye.

Thank you Roz.

I’m flattered that you consider me a researcher. I’m not much of a researcher at all. Let me argue that there are two things going on when you are doing research in the eyes of other people. The first one is statistics. Everyone should take a stats class everyone if you vote if you have a savings account if you engage with the out I’d world if you make decisions, you need to understand rudimentary statistics, that’s just clear. But once you know stats it’s way easier to do actual research that has any sense of reality to it because stats help us focus on the data that matters and ignore the data that doesn’t but there’s a second half of research and this is part of what you’re getting at we need to do research in a A way that our peers believe that the standards for research to get a vaccine approved are different than the standards of research. If you’re doing psychology experiments on freshman, which are different than the standards of research if you’re sharing anecdotes on a Blog the method needs to fit what people in your industry expect. So in many fields you got to have a PhD or they don’t count. It it does it matter.

If the research was done, well, that’s one of the signals that they’re looking for. So I am no Paragon of how to do research because I am upfront at telling people I bring you anecdotes. I bring you vignettes and you make your own decision if it resonates with you if it holds true to your experience with reality great, but your mileage may vary and I have never once said anything to the contrary.

Of peers who are way better at research than I am.

And if they say I did the math and I can prove it to true. I often believe them because that level of research matches my understanding of what’s needed in my industry and of stats so go read and I’ll link to this in the show notes the work that big knots semmelweis did when he developed modern statistics millions and millions of Women aren’t dead because some of us figured out how to do real research not because he had a fancy degree.

But because he understood how the world worked.

Hi Seth.

My name is Desiree and I have been following your work for ever since I was taking marketing classes in college for years and years and years. Thank you for your work. I just have had something on my mind and I wanted to send you a voice memo out. The small chance that you might respond to on your podcast.

I love the work that I do as a marketer. I feel like I have great instincts for it. I’m good at it. And I love the nonprofit organization. I work for has this incredible Mission and I really identify with it. I feel honored to work for them. But my struggle is that my immediate boss just works very different for me.

I’ve learned a lot from her and never appreciated. Our time together and just her different perspective, but I do find that I often feel deflated.

She has admitted that she’s motivated by praise and adulation and I just don’t function that way. So I often find in our discussions that she sees her car place in the organization just very differently than what I do and I often come away just filling the opposite. Of motivated, and I certainly have days where I’m able to like find my inner strength and connect with you know, why I’m doing what I do, and that gets me through the day and I can feel great, but I often have days that I just feel pretty discouraged. So I was just love any words of advice you can offer me. Thanks for your work.

Thank you Desiree, and I’m thrilled to hear that your work is going well, and I’m sorry that sometimes you’re feeling Slated when I was growing up when I was 9 or 10 years old. We used to take a shortcut to walk to school that shortcut walked along the fence and on the other side of that fence. I can visualize that fence right now was a really angry German Shepherd named Odin which at the time I felt was the most evil name I could think of and Odin hated me Odin barked and snapped and did everything he could to get through that fence.

Well after a few months of taking the shortcut, I realized Odin didn’t know me Odin was just being Odin and if I wanted to go on that walk I had to walk by the fence, but I didn’t have to take it personally. So like me like you your boss is a person she knows what she know. She believes what she believes she wants what she wants and it’s different than what we know or believe or want.

And if you’re going to work with her that has Be okay, if it’s not okay, if it is completely using you up don’t work there by all means your day your week your month is too valuable to give up if you are taking it personally if it is deflating you, but if you realize that she doesn’t see what you see or doesn’t want what you want. And that’s okay.

You’ve now figured out that you work with someone who you can manage as much as she is working to manage you you have decoded. And what she needs now you have to decide if you’re willing to bring that to work in exchange for all the other things you get that you do like out of that resonates and either way you’re going to come out fine.

Hi Seth, this is Ryan roads in Salem, Oregon. I’ve been really enjoying your new book the practice and it has me thinking a lot about my latest book project with so many crazy things that have happened so far in 2020 from the pandemic to wildfires and all the challenging issues. The world is facing.

It’s been very difficult to focus and it can seem like it’s harder than ever before to stay present.

All of us are feeling the stress of the moment in a lot of different ways. And it’s definitely impacted my own creativity. My question is how do you know when you genuinely need to step away from a a book or any other creative project for at least a little while to regroup rest and not burn yourself out versus when you’re just stuck in your head and need to just grind through it put another way.

How do you know when you’re just making excuses versus when you’re just in a dip that you need to work through? Thanks so much for all you do. It’s really helped. Keep me going through some really challenging times.

Thank you for this Ryan as we wrap up 2020. I think a whole bunch of people are feeling what you’re talking about. It has been an exhausting slog and not only that but it has been evenly distributed in the sense that everyone’s feeling it at the same time on even in the sense that some people have had more resources to be able to work their way through it. Some people have been luckier when it comes to things like health and support but yes a lot.

People are feeling it. And how do we know if it’s a dip? How do we know if we just grind through a little bit further? We’ll get to the other side versus how do we come to the conclusion that were burnt out and that maybe it’s time to catch our breath and the only advice I’ve got for you because it’s local in all situations. Is this has anyone else been in your situation and gotten to the other side?

And if they have are they glad they did so if you’re stuck in organic chemistry on your way to getting into medical school, it’s easy to look at the 485,000 doctors in American say all of them got through this to get to the other side and all of them will tell you that you can get through organic chemistry to get to the other side on the other hand.

There are plenty of authors out there who will tell you that. They have deleted entire books books that Months or years of their life. I am one of them. And it’s okay because then they got to work on another one your particular book your particular project. I don’t know how to tell but one thing I do know is we don’t get tomorrow over again and if you can spend a week or even a month not doing that thing that is using you up.

It might be worth trying because you can always go back to it, but you can’t get tomorrow over again. You for listening. I hope you and yours are doing well as we close out this year. I’m feeling optimism creeping around the corner.

We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution, or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know. And none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you going to face the possibilities within you when you got to face those fears, I’m not Gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for this.

Success stories I see out there but I can show us consider the alt MBA more than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-talented-mosquito- <==

In 1920 the most famous person who had ever lived Charlie Chaplin got divorced shortly thereafter. He was walking down the street and he was bit by a mosquito that mosquito escaped with its life and went back and fed it to kids a mosquito generation takes about a month. There are ten Generations a year.

That means that since Charlie Chaplin’s mosquito had its kids they have been 1,000 yen durations of mosquitoes. Hey, it’s F and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk surprisingly about talent, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

A seven-year-old kid didn’t in Texas starts knocking on doors and he’s asking for his age and dollars 77 777 he raises 22 Grand we said wow. This is a big idea, you know, everybody in the world could care about clean water everybody in the world has a birthday every year and we have enough stuff. What if we could turn the birthday into a giving moment into an unselfish day our birthday, so people could live longer and have birthdays.

To find out more visit charity water.org.

So this is a really short podcast of rant more likely about Talent 1,000 generations of mosquitoes between Charlie Chaplin’s mosquito. And that one that was buzzing in your ear last night when you were trying to sleep.

The DNA of those mosquitoes is almost indistinguishable mosquitoes have not evolved much in the last hundred years in the United Kingdom. There used to be an enormous number of dead hedgehogs on the road because hedgehogs are really stupid and really slow and they would get stranded in the middle of the road and get run over hedgehogs have evolved in the last hundred years as most of the slope. Stupid ones are dead didn’t have kids.

And so the ones that are left are better at hiding out and that’s why you don’t see hedgehogs on the road as often as you used to and then there’s the famous case of moths which evolved to change from white to gray as pollution and stood covered the White Cliffs of Dover and other parts of the United Kingdom, but back to the mosquitoes and let’s talk about Humans, 1,000 Generations, if we figure that a typical human generation is 20 years.

That means that you are to the 1000th ancestor lived 20,000 years ago twenty thousand years ago. There was no farming. There was almost nothing in the way of organized culture and Manufacturing. It was entirely hunters and gatherers. And if we went back in time and swapped babies from today to 20,000 years ago, no one would be able to tell them apart.

Genetically, there might have been some drift and some small differences, but it is absurd to think that we evolved to get better at playing Cricket or programming computers or painting paintings. These are cultural artifacts. They are not genetic. Traits and so one of the many challenges that I have with things like the Myers-Briggs personality test is not that people don’t have personalities. Of course, we do it’s not that some people are born with a certain Instinct toward one sort of behavior or another. Of course, we are it’s that their horoscopes.

It’s that culture creates such a wide variety of personalities that are suitable for various jobs. That it’s absurd to look at a few letters of the alphabet juxtaposed with one another and assume that tells you if you should be an insurance adjuster or a volunteer fireman. That’s not the way jobs in our culture actually work.

I’ve studied thousands of leaders. I studied tens of thousands of creatives and here’s what I’ve discovered leaders have exactly one thing in common. They lead some of them have Charisma some of them don’t some of them stutter some of them don’t some of them are tall. All some of them aren’t and the same things true for people who ship creative work.

Some of them are garrulous. They can’t get through the day without interacting with other people slapping them on the back. The pandemic is the worst thing that’s happened to their social life others are painfully shy they’ve trained all their lives to stay home on their own. They don’t have a lot in common other than they choose to do creative work growing up in Buffalo, New York. Didn’t know one person who was good at Cricket is that because there’s some sort of trait that makes people from New Zealand or Australia or India good at Cricket, but not people in Buffalo New York, of course not it’s simply that the culture doesn’t encourage people to play cricket.

They say Wayne Gretzky is an off-the-charts talent that he was born to play hockey. Well except almost no one plays hockey. Fewer than 1% of the people on earth have ever played a game of hockey and I’m not sure that Wayne Gretzky would have been untalented at something else. Now. There are personality traits their instincts. We have to head toward one thing or another but it’s a mistake to imagine that we are precluded from doing anything simply because what our DNA says and that of course leads to the crime of racial Injustice. This that what we’ve done is invented this narrative about what people look like and have determined that that somehow means that they’re going to behave one way or another but there’s zero correlation between what people look like and what they are capable of being good at and yes, it’s a crime. It’s a crime against all of us when we say to somebody because you look like this you aren’t able to do that as I hope we can understand almost. Just nothing in our modern culture is driven by how we were wired at Birth we get good at things because we do them and we do them because the culture encourages us or gives us the opportunity to do things and that leads to the story We Tell ourselves if we tell ourselves the story that we weren’t born to do something that we don’t have any good ideas that we’re not suitable to lead or to do serious work or to make commitments. It’s we’ve been brainwashed. We’ve been indoctrinated. We have been tricked into believing something that is clearly not true.

Of course. None of us are as flexible as plastic as we’d like to be particularly as we get older particularly as we get grooved into whatever pattern were in it’s harder and harder to switch but just because it’s difficult to switch doesn’t mean it’s impossible and there are more doors open than ever before.

And so the question is what is keeping us from going through the door.

There’s a thing called an invisible fence. And the way it works is you put a battery-powered collar around your dog and then you bury a wire in the yard with lots of white flags so that the dog can see where the flags are and then you train the dog so that every time the dog goes near the White Flag a little buzz goes off in their collar and then if the dog was a Further they get a small shock like a pinch.

I’m pretty sure it’s not kind to the dog. But almost every dog I’ve ever seen who is properly trained at this only gets to pinch a couple times and then they associate the buzz the buzz the collar makes with the fact that a pinch might come if they don’t stop and this invisible fence works really, well, it works. So well that most owners can take the batteries out of the collar because the Therese aren’t the point anymore that what’s happened is the dog itself has decided to go nowhere near the white flags and part of the myth of our genetic makeup of talent is that we have been pushed and trained to go nowhere near the white flags, even though the doors are open, even though you can show up and lead or make a podcast or have a blog or connect people or start something or make things. Better and so we need to take a hard. Look at what’s possible.

There are problems all around us the worst of my lifetime, but we’re going to make them go away and we’ll do that by working with each other by opening the doors for five people or 10 people not with one Fell Swoop, but from the Grassroots from the people who care doing work that matters for people who are ready to receive that work.

And yeah, we can learn how to do this better, and we have to stop saying I wasn’t born to do that. My personality test tells me I can’t do that. It’s for other people because it’s for us. Thanks for listening. Go make a Ruckus. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from last time, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

If you want to learn to ride a bicycle don’t watch a video don’t read a book. Hey, it’s Seth and I’m here to talk about the akimbo workshops. These are interactive real-time online workshops that work and we’re devoting 2022 finding one that matches where you need to go if you’re ready to level up. I hope you’ll check out a Kimbo.com to find out about our proven effective workshops.

Seth my name is Kyle reading Seth.

This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here – this is anupam.

Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Seth, this is Rex. Whoosah. Hi, this is Russell is from Greece.

Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you if you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, please He’s visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button.

Hi Seth. This is Barack again from Israel now in San Diego, California. I’m thinking a lot about failure recently. My last question to you was about failure to it seems to me like failure / fear is the single most critical mindset obstacle we should overcome. I heard you many times arguing to dance with it when you talk about fail and fear.

I think I understand what you mean and my reference is always the mindset of Zorba the Greek about dancing which I understood is embracing fear and failure with joy as they are part or even maybe the essence of being alive, but maybe I got it all wrong. Can you please elaborate what you mean by dance with it?

Thank you Seth for your teaching. It had transformed my life and the life of the people around.

I think there are two messages that Zorba is trying to teach us. The first one is life is more interesting. If you play it to make a difference life is more interesting. If you get out of your head and connect with other people life is more interesting if you treat it as an adventure and then the second thing as captured in the final scene of the movie is Even if it doesn’t work out, even if it’s a catastrophic ending, it’s still better to dance than to not dance that yes, it might not work the way you hoped but mourning the fact that it didn’t work the way you hoped doesn’t make anything better.

We only get today once what will we do with it? So when I talk about dancing with fear, I’m not saying that the dance. We’ll make the fear go away. What I’m saying is the fear is going to be there no matter what so you might as well dance.

Hey boys.

Did you ever see a mortar splendiferous cash?

Hey Seth, this is Dave from Durham North Carolina, I have a question about your question and answer podcast. The first question asked in that podcast was from a tech person who is asking why didn’t the experienced teachers in his family except his advice about how to do distance learning and in your answer and really in his question was the underlying implication that people should follow the advice and follow New ideas just Implement them though in my experience many if not, most new ideas aren’t worth following aren’t particularly good indeed in the education field and I am a teacher we talked about the flavor of the month.

What do we do in the classroom this month? And then there’s something next month because the original idea did not work. So my question is this how do you think practitioners can distinguish between good ideas new ideas and bad new ideas. Are there any criteria we should be looking for? Thanks Seth and thanks for all you do and your podcasts.

Thank you for this question Dave. It’s a fine question. Because if we think about education over the last 200 years there is almost nothing in classroom pedagogy. That is the Same as it was in the eighteen hundreds. We’re not walking around hitting kids with rulers. We’re not reciting page after page from the primmer.

We don’t have one-room schoolhouses. Generally, we’re not I mean I can go on and on school keeps changing and sometimes it changes for the better. We have figured out a way to teach a lot of people a lot of things but it’s not there yet. It’s not even close to there yet. And I think part of the question we need to ask ourselves is is what I’m doing right now working regardless of whether there is an alternative is this method the one I have right now worth my time worth my students time here is what we have seen over the last nine months turning classroom education into online education is not working that the powers that be the bureaucracy the ones that have tried to Classroom learning into a zoom room have failed have categorically failed by every measure they hold to be important. They have failed and they call it online learning but it’s not learning.

It’s a failed attempt at education and I hope people who are doing their best to are exhausted who are seeking to make things better for kids for parents for teachers. All of them can begin by acknowledging that the status quo is not twerking that makes it a lot easier to try something new something new might work better and one of the frustrations I’ve had since I started akimbo five years ago is that akimbo has pioneered proven and demonstrated again. And again Alternatives online learning that actually works for adults. Yes, but the principles the pedagogy are there for anyone who wants to grab it and yet the Status quo in the bureaucracy didn’t want to have anything to do with it before the pandemic. And now now that distance learning there. It is in quotation marks is mandated. They’re still relying on imperson education crammed into a remote setting.

So I share the original questioners frustration, which is if what you’ve got isn’t working and you need to spend the Cycles. Anyway, why not try something new? So yes, I totally hear your frustration first. It’s the new math and then the new math doesn’t work. I learned how to read from ITA. I had to learn a whole new alphabet just to learn to read and then I had to unlearn that alphabet to learn to read real books. That was a bad idea.

So yeah, there are plenty of bad ideas in education and learning in pedagogy. Yes. Some people should be the Explorers the pioneers and others should learn from them, but we cannot dismiss Innovation out of hand particularly when we’re spending so much time and so much money on a system that can work better than it does.

So, I’m in favor of taking our time of testing it of measuring it of seeing what works, but I’m even more in favor of trying things because trying things is how we make things better. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible. Or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution.

You’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-persistence-of-technology- <==

How long are you going to have a Twitter account? Ten years from now or 15 years from now. Are you going to spend any time on Twitch or Tinder? Are you going to run to see what’s going on on Tick-Tock? Hey, it’s Seth and this is a Kimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about tech adoption and Lon. Longevity, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

A seven-year-old kid didn’t in Texas starts knocking on doors and he’s asking for his age and dollars 77 777 he raises 22 Grand and we said wow, this is a big idea, you know, everybody in the world could care about clean water everybody in the world has a birthday every year and we have enough stuff. What if we could turn the birthday into a giving moment into an unselfish day our birthday, so people could live longer and have birthdays.

To find out more visit charity water.org.

In 1976 when I was 16 years old. I got my first email account today in 2020. I spent more than an hour answering email in 1967 more than 50 years ago. I remember listening to The Beatles. I listened to the Beatles this morning. Why is it that some technology sticks around 20 years ago? I had a geocities account.

I also had an AOL account and a CompuServe account. In fact, I spent most of my time in 1995 on AOL Seth would at AOL.com was my email address. We read articles about how texting was the big thing in Japan. And how it was coming here and people said well it might one day but it won’t last very long that was more than 20 years ago in 1998. So many people were using Yahoo! That many people thought Yahoo! And the internet were the same thing and it was believed that their hegemony their dominance over everything would continue forever. They were going to buy eBay and Netscape and that would be the end of the Game, why is it that something’s come and something’s go culture is built on technology books are a technology. They were a brand new idea 500 years ago and 500 years later. People are still buying and reading books and what about board games? People are playing 90 year old board games today cars. Well for the basics of a car the four wheels the steering wheel the internal combustion engine. The driver who is in charge the horn this is 90 years all in a row, but other things they cycle a little bit more quickly Kodachrome had a 50-year run and now we see that the industry of cameras not just film cameras, but digital cameras down 90% movies what you can invite somebody over to watch a movie from 1972 or 1974 without apologizing for but maybe not So Much Anymore that a good 50 year run the Beatles rock and roll that’s a 55-year run geocities went away. But Twitter though, it is technically completely obsolete sticks around.

I want to argue after that opening rant. There might be five or six factors at work here. The first one is this early adopters early adopters are fickle they show up because they want something that is new. They read articles about what’s going on at the Consumer Electronics Show their favorite thing to do with the piece of technology, whether it’s an issue of a magazine or a new form of silicon is to talk about something about it. That’s new and then As Yogi Berra taught us they say well, it’s too crowded. No one goes there anymore.

So the people who were all excited about Raspberry Pi a couple of years ago are now on to the next thing so if a technology is fueled and supported just by early adopters, it’s likely it’s not going to last that long. That’s one of the many reasons tech companies are so focused at crossing the chasm. Them Jeff Moore is idea that early adopters want something different than the early majority the early majority will buy something Embrace something work with something not because it’s new but because it works and so there’s a Chasm of Gulf between the things that are new in the things that work and maybe you can cross that Chasm.

So the argument could be made that if you play in politics Twitter has crossed the chasm. That if you want to be in the discussion among the 10 or 15 million people who live and die for this stuff in the United States, you got to be on Twitter and it doesn’t matter that Twitter is technically obsolete because for people in that industry, it is useful or consider. What happened to wordperfect wordperfect was the best word processor the dominant word processor the word processor forever because after all how could you make a WordPress? The third that much better and then Microsoft Word came along and at first no one switched to word except for some early adopters, but there aren’t that many word processor early adopters.

We’ve seen them before they’ve embraced scrivener. There are people like me who use nicest but in general not too many of us, so just a few embraced word, but then Microsoft did something extraordinary that by hooking it in to the the operating system of Windows and selling Windows across the chasm word came with it and wordperfect. Never knew what hit them.

So here we are 40 years later 30 years later and word is still dominant that is until we start counting online word processors like Google Docs which have the advantage of being free and being networked which leads to the next idea the network effect. What we About culture and about computers is that if it works better when other people use it people are more likely to talk about it.

What does that have to do with tech while the internet has brought Network effects deep into almost everything that we have in Tech that a walkie-talkie when you’re the only one who has one doesn’t do you any good. So you got to get your friends to get a walkie-talkie or a fax machine, but now that we’re on the internet and it’s true for everything a Google doc works better than a word doc because a Google doc is effortless to share and once people start sharing it it becomes sticky because if you want to switch to a new thing you have to persuade every one of the people you got to use the old thing that they have to switch to the early adopters brought people along but now the people hold the early adopters back. Slack worked one of the fastest-growing piece of software in history because you can’t use it by yourself. But when Microsoft and others show up with a competitor to slack they have a problem, which is that teams that are currently using Slack are in no hurry to switch to something. That’s new. But what about books because books don’t really have the same sort of network effect. You can happily read a book all by yourself books benefit from the idea of infrastructure and partners in order for books to become the dominant force of information dispersal in the eighteen hundreds and the 1900 s they needed bookstores. So an entire industry was built on the idea that you can have a little store that you can run yourself as a lifestyle business that sells books doesn’t cell phones doesn’t sell batteries it rarely cells pencils.

It sells books and the book publishers quickly came to understand that their customer wasn’t the reader. Their customer was the bookstore because if they could make bookstores happy, they would get more than their fair share of shelf space. So I got the Shelf space they would sell more books. That’s why the typical reader doesn’t know who published what they don’t need to know. They’re not the customer.

The bookstore is the customer. So now we have bookstores that are heavily invested in books persisting even though they are technologically obsolete because they’re not culturally obsolete that the scarcity that makes it worth owning a bookstore that there are finite number of bookstores and a finite number of books. It has helped keep books vibrant in the face of cheaper faster more networked Alternatives. So what this means is that when book Innovations showed up it wasn’t The Publishers and the early majority readers who are fighting against the Innovations. It was an entire industry of printers and salespeople and bookstore owners that wanted the status quo to remain I think the same could probably be said about professionals with film cameras that once you’re good at Kodachrome what you’re making a living with Kodachrome. You’re not necessarily in a Hurry to replace all of it with a digital technology. It was only when the Groundswell from the bottom up came and swamped it finally with shareable photos that were coming from smartphones that finally the camera industry collapsed.

The next idea is the idea of utility versus novelty geocities had very little utility. You didn’t build a business on the back. Of geocities but sites, like Shopify enable people to build a whole business around it Kickstarter probably isn’t The Cutting Edge in technology anymore. But if you are a professional Kickstarter Creator or a professional eBay seller, you’re not looking for novelty, you’re looking for utility and then the next one the next one spoken as a young baby boomer. Is that baby boomers? I think that everything is about them and so rock and roll persisted for 40 or 50 years. So the movies of the 70s 80s and 90s persisted for 30 years these generational shifts happen very slowly.

But what’s happening now for the first time in history, is that the generation Coming of Age teenagers and 20s? Grew up with a smartphone they grew up with always-on internet with the network with constant shifts in the technological platform. And so as the Baby Boomers die off as we take naps instead of going to see what’s new in technology.

This generational shift is putting together one more giant change in the culture. So when we think about whether or not a Ecology is going to change things. I think we have to look at each one of these five functions all of which dance right next to each other all of which influence each other and then we can decide is this a novelty is it going to be embraced by the early adopters are their Network effects that matter are people from one generation or another driving the change forward, but as William Goldman famously said Nobody knows anything.

It’s way easier after the fact to point out that of course email lasts forever. But no your CompuServe address doesn’t matter one bit. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back in a second with answers to questions from previous episodes. But first here is a message from our sponsor.

It’s Maria. Seth my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here – this is on the palm. This is Caitlin.

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Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They said this is Rex Pizza. Hi, this is Russell news from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you if you’ve got a question about this or any other episode.

I hope you’ll visit akinbode. Think that’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button. We got three questions to go over this week. Here we go.

Hi Seth, this is Jamal from Queens New York to cut the consolidation publishing episode had me thinking penguin.

Another large Publishers can probably have their readers opt-in simply by asking for their emails in the folds of the book.

I you permission marketing.

But what about the upstart when an author artist decides to go off on their own and they have answered the questions was it? What is it for who’s it for and what it’s meant to change.

How do they find and connect with the smallest viable audience? Thanks for your work. Have a great new year.

Thanks Jamal. I’m going to flip this on its head. I think it’s easier for a specific author with a specific audience to earn permission. Then it is for Random House. It’s because I got to tell you I don’t really trust random house and most people don’t either because they’re not the ones who wrote the book. They’re not the ones who have shown up in someone’s life. They’re just the publisher and deep down. I think that people have been taught to believe that big companies will keep expanding how much permission they think they have until they turn into spammers.

So the hard work that Random House faces is not having a random house list because that’s not going to work. What they have to do is organize very tight very specific lists for people who they can earn trust from but if you’re a specific author and you found even a portion of your smallest viable audience, well, then serving them serving them regularly often for no charge is a great way to turn attention into trust. And once you’ve earned that trust now you’re on your way to your 1,000 true fans and is Kevin Kelly taught us. 1,000 true fans is enough.

Hey Seth.

This is been motel from New York City. And I have a question about a phenomenon you may or may not have covered that’s related to the concept of finding the smallest viable audience. And that is of what I think of as audience capacity. I’ve noticed over several years of producing and marketing my shows and it’s sending others of the same genre that rather than continuing to gradually Snowball the audience size for something kind of Max’s out or just hold steady over the last ten years a monthly film series. I produce has always been held until March 20 20, of course in a 215 seat Auditorium.

Our audience turnout has always been somewhere within the seating capacity range of the theater with a low of maybe 185 and on the couple of occasions every year when we sell out your only turning a dozen or so people away. This is regardless of what we’re showing whether I’ve bird or forgotten to send out a press release the size of our email list or even when the local PBS affiliate did a profile on our series on TV.

I’ve been producing and distributing a boutique line of DVDs as 2013 and with one or two minor exceptions sales of each has been in the same range regardless of the amount of press I get or who’s in the movie on the DVD in March of this year. I started doing a livestream show on YouTube with a friend every week and again the number of viewers.

Watch us live and who also then watch this shows that have been archived in the days following his about the same. My question about audience capacity is if this is a facet of The Human Condition and or marketing you or anyone’s noticed. Thanks so much.

Thanks been this fits in very nicely with Jamal’s question because you have correctly pointed out that some things we do will never cross a Chasm the some things we do are just not Destined to appeal to masses and masses of people and not only is that okay. That’s fantastic as long as we realize it that the yield on that theater and I can’t wait post vaccine until we have theaters again is the key if you fill the theater you’ll do fine.

The problem is getting a theater that’s too big and not filling it the yield is what is our return on the We focused on and if we know we have a niche audience we can treat them appropriately. We will not spend all of our time and effort trying to somehow cross the chasm to dumb it down or to even it out. We will instead become ever more specific and ever more peculiar.

So that the audience we do have get the joke and comes back because getting someone to come back is different than getting someone to tell their friends on impact Theory the Other day, you said something that I’ll paraphrase as I do not believe in authenticity.

It’s not correct to think that you can do whatever you feel like and that whatever version of you that pops into your head is the authentic one. The audience does not want an authentic you you do not want an authentic anybody when you hire someone close paraphrase. You went on to develop this sentiment into emphasizing the importance of consistency and that perhaps the right to be authentic or inconsistent needs to be earned.

I don’t think you mean to make it sound like we need to sell our souls for the sake of a paying audience or reshape ourselves into a brand that an audience will pay us for do you believe there is a part of our authentic selves that is worth sharing with the world and can that only be discovered through financial or audience feedback.

Thank you for your time and generosity. City Thank you.

Jonathan for this lovely question. So grateful to hear from you. Here’s the thing if we want to quote share our authentic self with the public with any public. Well, then a transaction is going on. It might not be a transaction for money, but it is certainly a transaction for attention sharing how you feel in the moment with friends and family is one of the great benefits of having friends and family, is that they We’ll be friends and family even after your short tantrum even after the speed bump even after you share your fears or dreams, but if we’re going to a larger group of people if we are showing up as any sort of professional or Community member.

Well, then every time we do show up we are borrowing basically taking someone’s attention and if we waste that attention we have burned there. Trust and it’s harder to get that attention next time and so no, I don’t think we have the privilege or the right to share how we are feeling in this moment. Call it authentic if you want. I’d rather not with anybody. We feel like we just don’t get to do that because our culture belongs to all of us places like Twitter tried to get around that by saying well, you will only be heard by the people who follow you and in the small, I think that is true that when it is originally conceived if you have 50 people following you they have signed up for the full you the you in all of its Shades the problem happens when media companies decide they will grow by encouraging sharing because now it happens is all sorts of behavior outlying Behavior gets shared more frequently than quote normal behavior and what we end up with if we take a glance At any form of social media is it seems like everyone is going crazy.

Everyone’s not going crazy. That’s just what’s getting shared and I’m encouraging you not to do that for a living not to do that as a form of sustenance because what we need to do at some level is get back to the center of doing productive work work that matters for people who care whether or not we’re getting paid for it because we are not just takers from the culture. We are contributors.

To the culture. So that’s my rant.

Thanks everybody for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is. It puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you got to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number. One reason why we don’t write that book.

It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

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==> -spirit-of-ecstasy- <==

I’m guessing you own something something really really expensive one of the most expensive things you’ve ever purchased, but you’re not that aware of exactly what it looks like. But before we can talk about that, I want to share the tragic story of Eleanor Velasco Thornton. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

Back in a second to talk about tech adoption and Longevity, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

And a seven-year-old kid didn’t in Texas starts knocking on doors and he’s asking for his age and dollars 77 777 he raises 22 Grand we said wow. This is a big idea, you know, everybody in the world could care about clean water everybody in the world has a birthday every year and we have enough stuff. What if we could turn the birthday into a giving moment into an unselfish day our birthdays so people could live longer and have birthdays.

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Thornton who was known as Thorn by her friends was a secretary with an impoverished background. She lived in the early nineteen hundreds. She was the Secretary of John Walter. John Walter was an editor at an up-and-coming car magazine called the car that magazine was owned by the super fancy Elite status focused Baron Montague.

And John montagu was of course married. He was married to Lady Cecil Victoria constants care, but when he met Thorn he fell in love with her not only did he have an illicit affair with his secretary at the magazine that he ran as a hobby. He also had a 1909 Rolls-Royce Silver ghost. One of the fanciest cars anyone owned at the time.

It wasn’t fancy enough. For the baron Montague and so he commissioned a friend the famous sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes, because it wouldn’t do to commission a nun famous sculptor to craft a hood ornament for his fancy car a way of showing everyone else how fancy his car was that hood ornament was seven inches tall. Of course not only did he commissioned Charles likes to make a Sure for the hood ornament of his car. He asked the sculptor to make the ornament in the likeness of Eleanor Thornton.

Yes, in fact the woman he was unable to talk about in public because of her background of not being wealthy enough was on the hood of his car the idea of these hood ornaments started to spread and one after another rolls-royce’s in the United Kingdom started to have these garish sculptures on on the hood Claud Johnson, the managing director of Rolls-Royce could not abide the so he went to the original sculptor Charles Robinson Sykes and asked him to make an official one.

Well, he used the same model Eleanor Velasco Thornton and crafted the spirit of ecstasy. The owners of Rolls-Royce didn’t particularly like the sculpture, but they realized they had little choice and so it became official and rolls-royce’s at the beginning offered it as only an option. And but virtually every single person paid extra to have that hood ornament on the front of their car.

It has been variously silver plated. It is variously been nickel-plated and every once in a while. It has been gold plated and current models of the Rolls-Royce have a device inside of it that will instantly retract the hood ornament when you park it so that no one can steal it now lots of cars. Back in the day had a radiator right in the front the radiator had a cap and the radiator cap was the perfect place to put some sort of ornament, but that’s not really what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the fact that at the beginning horse-drawn carriages had two sorts of emblems on them.

One of them was a discreet mark from The Carriage maker who did the carriage itself. This was a Hallmark of Way of signing one’s work. It wasn’t that obvious to a passerby but the other thing many fancy horse drawn carriages had were flags flags to indicate just how Elite the passenger inside that wagon inside that Carriage was two passers-by and this flag is memorialized in many of the badges that we see in the front of a car.

So the BMW emblem Mm is nothing but a Bavarian flag in a circle to this day. There are people who collect these badges on eBay a Mercedes-Benz hood ornament from 1929 costs about three thousand dollars, but this isn’t what I wanted to talk about. What I wanted to talk about is something that’s on the back of your car and my guess is you can’t specifically tell me what it is because on the back of cars for as long as people can remember car companies have been Listing some secret Words. Which model number. How big is the engine does it have fuel injection. Is it a hybrid?

The question is? Why do they do this? The person driving the car knows what kind of car they’re driving the passerby. What are they looking at when they see these inscriptions on the back of the car? And why are they so unattractive has no. No car manufacturer ever taken a typography course. Why do they have such funny letter forms? Why are they filled with numbers and letters that don’t make any sense.

So I have a couple theories Theory one goes back to the flags most cars when they’re working are good enough. So if you’re going to have a car that’s good enough. Why would you pay extra 2 x 3 x 10x more for a car that’s been Better than good enough. The answer is to show bystanders the elite status of the person who is driving the car in our culture a culture where we don’t wear suits and ties anymore.

This is a remaining status badge a way to show up in public and say I have something really nice. We have things called car washes. There are a lot of good. Ins return on investment reasons to get one’s car washed but a fancy car deserves to be shiny. Why not because the person inside can see it when they’re driving but because the person outside can see the signal now, what about the ugly fonts? What about the fact that the kerning doesn’t make any sense?

Well, my limited research has shown that most of the designs of the logos the emblems and the lettering on a car is done. Nah. By graphic designers and typographers, but by car Engineers the person who engineered the car who made that thing that’s not going to break down in their spare time. They made a logo to maybe they based it on the wallpaper. They saw in a French hotel.

That’s how we ended up with that funny plus sign. That is the Chevy logo. Maybe there’s some tortured history as to how it came to be and those Letters on the back. Well, those letters on the back are generally chosen first and foremost for how easy are they going to be to manufacture and it’s only in the last few years. We’ve been able to manufacture amazing typography out of durable things like metal for a reasonable price, but one of the things that goes through the heads of everybody who is making a car is can we remind people of the car they grow? With because a car is such a big purchase. We don’t want to do something flimsy or risky that there aren’t that many early adopters in the car business people play it safe because it’s a status decision and a significant financial decision.

But here’s the real point of this little bit of a riff. when you see cars driving down the road, you are almost certainly paying more attention to cars like yours when you buy a red Honda suddenly you notice just how many red Honda’s there are in the world and when you pull up near a car that’s like yours you are reading the emblems on the back because you got nothing else to do because you’re not texting while driving right you’re reading the emblems on the back and the main purpose of eating 325 with an eye next to it the main purpose of writing 95d the main purpose of saying diesel or Turbo or announcing a new model through the little logo on the back is to make all the people who don’t have the latest version of that car feel like they are behind that you are breaking their self assurance by showing them that there’s a new model out there and They don’t have it that the purpose the marketing purpose of all of those letters and numbers on the back of cars is to make all their previous customers feel insufficient and insecure it’s fascinating to note that recent models of the Tesla don’t seem to be doing this.

This is a huge error from a p&l point of view because the kind of person that went out to buy a Tesla in the first place is a Neo Philly ack. They like doing things that are new well by announcing to every person who already has a car. That’s something even newer has come along what you end up doing as a car company is perversely creating a sort of satisfaction because the customer of the previous model knows that they bought a car from a company that continues to innovate and it creates a thirst in them a thirst for the next one.

Because that’s why they bought the last one because they want the next one.

The car companies learned a hard lesson when the Edsel failed and that lesson wasn’t don’t name a car after your son that lesson was you can’t keep accelerating how soon most people are going to buy a car that it used to be that you had a car for who knows how long the idea that new car models came. Year that it was a big announcement like the New Year in the theater or the New Year in the movies after the Oscar seasons are over there was going to be a new year in cars that you don’t have a 58 you don’t have a 59 you are falling behind if it were up to the car companies they come out with a new model year every month because their goal is to cause people to continue to upgrade Lord knows the computer companies.

Don’t have any hesitation about coming up with new models as often as they possibly can but the difference between a computer and a car is we notice everybody else’s car and that car you just drove by is a billboard. It is a billboard whispering to other people who already know about that car. Then it has been upgraded. And so the cycle continues the cycle of sort of clunky logos that remind us of the sort of clunky logos that Minded us of the sort of clunky logos.

It’s a cycle where the hood ornament for the Rolls-Royce has gone from 7 inches to three inches and that shrinkage is based on safety. But the people who seek status the people who seek status continue on this cycle of telling themselves that they need the new model because the new model is safer or faster or better.

And what about Eleanor? Well a few years after the sculpture in front of every Rolls-Royce was based on her. She and the baron John montagu went on a cruise illicitly continuing their Affair in private that cruise that boat to India. It was attacked in 1915 by a German YouTube boat and the boat sank Eleanor died and it was thought the baron John montagu died is But somehow he got himself onto a raft and several days later. He was rescued and I’m not sure why maybe it has to do with 7-inch hood ornaments, but my hunches that he did something probably not very nice to be the only person left on that raft status rolls luxury goods scarcity. Who’s up Who’s down?

This is all lived out loud every day on the LA freeway. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with a bunch of questions from previous episodes. But first here is a message from our sponsor.

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It’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pot pie.

This is Caitlin. Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex.

Whoosah.

Hi, this is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is Is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you this podcast is growing.

It’s spreading not because I’m promoting it but because you are telling other people and I appreciate that and the number of questions coming in keeps going up in the questions keep getting better. So thank you for that. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode. I hope you’ll visit akimbo link.

That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate. It button. We’ve got two questions to start with they don’t seem related, but they are so I’ll play them both back to back. Hi Seth. This is fill in the United States in Indianapolis, Indiana.

I just listened to your podcast on consolidation publishing and it really made me think deeper about connecting with people that are like me reading books like me and so on and then of the podcast you said we want to find those people that are like us a reading books like us and connect to those people.

And I’ve been thinking this for a while and inside the corporation. I work which is a large corporation. I’ve a very Niche role there and I have a group of people that connect with but I find myself wanting to stretch my mind in my thinking and my knowledge beyond the bounds of that Corporation. And so I want to find people that are outside of that Corporation to connect with and share these ideas.

I know they’re out there and I honestly have a few people in mind that I could connect with but I want to make sure that as I reach out and connect with those people Build a community. I do it in a way that builds enrollment and engagement in the right attitudes. So, how can I step into this ahead? What can I do to take that knowledge of building that group in a corporation to applying that outside of and what may I be coming against?

What type of fear do you think I’m experiencing or what kind of things are holding me back there. Thanks so much Seth.

Hey Seth, this is Dave from Glendale, California and just had a question regarding when you find yourself. Yourself in a mid career slump say, you know, you’re approaching kind of the middle of your career and find yourself. Maybe just having a tougher time finding work or anything else. What’s a good mindset to keep in mind in terms of figuring out what’s next? I know it’s tempting to think of re-enrolling at the some school or chasing after 77 new degree or some midlife kind of switch. But you know, I find myself thinking that that’s hiding much like you mentioned on the show. So anyways, like to hear your thoughts on that and thanks for all you do.

Thanks Phil for this your desire to weave together Community is really valuable. It’s the way we make things better. It’s the way we improve and learn and Dave. I know the feeling that mid career slump is a sign that you’re listening. You’re listening to the voice in your head. Ed and you’re aware that we don’t have forever to do the work we want to do and the way forward in both is to realize that if we invite someone to connect with us, we are doing them a real service if the connection is about them and their work and where they’re going if we’re offering them status and affiliation and if someone honestly says no it’s not for me we’ve learned something but better.

To learn something then to ignore them altogether. So my argument is we find the smallest viable group maybe in the case of Phil and David’s only five people find five people who are intellectually curious five people who want to join a book group five people who want to join a mastermind to challenge each other and support each other week after week, it’s free. It’s just the commitment. It’s a commitment to be on Zoom together for 45 minutes. The Saturday from 10 a.m. To 10:45 a.m.

Show up show up ready to contribute shortbread e to learn to do the work. I bet if you think really hard if you extend yourself, you’ll find a dozen or two dozen people who are worth asking ask them one at a time. You’ll put together an All-Star group and it might be as it was for me when chip Conley did it in 1983 that you’ll be remembering. That 37 years later.

So thank you both for leading.

I said this is Shivani from Chennai India. So I was just reading your book the practice and I’m reading this paragraph. It says it’s hard to imagine Tim Cook blowing a Samsung phone because Apple seeks to Corner the market not spread an idea or create positive change. They’re in the business of raising their stock price.

So I just had a quick thought on this where you know, you do mention that other What does dubler each other and this question is coming from the fact that I am in an industry where I make sustainable and vegan wallets as an alternate to leather products. And you know, I also I definitely see to create positive change. I know that but I also would not openly talk about my competitors because a person can only own one wallet and I do I want to say I would love to know your thoughts on that.

Thank you. Thanks, Shivani. I’m going to put a link to your site in the show notes. I just bought one of your wallets. I want to disagree about something and agree about something else. I’ll agree with this. You can never have too many books and you can never have too many songs on your hard drive and you can never have too many.

Let’s make a long list, but I’m also going to argue that every single person who buys one of your beautiful wallets already has a wallet and as Tim O’Reilly famously said Ed our enemy is not piracy our enemies obscurity the number of people who have a vegan wallet is Tiny your challenge is not to Corner the market in vegan wallets. It’s to grow the market in vegan wallets that if you and the other people who do what you do all put links to each other on your pages.

Everyone’s business would go up. We have to embrace the fact that our customers probably know. More than we do about the market about Alternatives about products that they need. So hiding information from them doesn’t increase our market share hiding information from them simply decreases trust that what we need to do. If we’re not trying to build the most valuable company in the world and Corner the market which I think is true for everyone who’s listening to this today.

What we need to do is realize that our goal Liz community that our goal is helping people get to where they’re going and giving them something to talk about and one of the best ways to do that is to help them see the category the way you do greetings Seth.

This is Tracy from Ohio. I’m really enjoying reading your new book this the practice and it is sparked a question for me throughout my adult working life.

I’ve always felt I was moving through a process where I’d suddenly stumble upon that thing. That I’m most passionate about doing the problem. At least for me is that I have many areas of Interest marketing branding painting Wellness nutrition great design Fitness and when I move down one specific career path, I often find myself looking over my shoulder kind of longingly at that other thing that I love to do kind of like the grass is always greener on the other side.

I’m past the 30-year career Mark. So I feel like I should have arrived at the passionate work destination by now, but I haven’t or I don’t think I have any hints on how I can get there or am I already there without realizing it? Thanks for all that you do and I’m also really enjoying the TMS seminar. So thank you.

Thank you for this Tracy. I think it’s true that the grass is greener. I think that it’s a law of physics the way the light hits The Grass over there the light bounces back the photons change the shade of green and the grass is greener over there. Of course, it is because far away you can’t see the problems.

All you can see are the possibilities He’s so you are a normal intelligent curious human because you have lots of things that you would like to do. That’s not up for discussion. What’s up for discussion is can you pick a thing? It doesn’t have to be the thing simply a thing that you care enough about doing that you’re willing to stick with it.

Even when the stuff on the other side seems Greener because jumping from thing to thing is thrilling. I’m a jumper the World Wide Web was invented for me. Oh, A puppy I’ll click on anything. But if you want to make a difference, or if you want to make a profit, it turns out that it’s on the other side of the chasm that things really start to heat up that things really start to work.

And so what we need to do is not pick the perfect thing but to pick anything that we are willing to commit to and then commit to it long enough to get to the other side.

Hi Seth. It’s been career from Colorado. I’ve been really enjoying the practice and I love your mentality and advice about failure.

I recently started a podcast as the failure guy and I’m seeking to embrace the importance of failure as a necessary step on the path towards success.

My question is what advice can you give to those people who want to embrace the power of failure but struggle to look at each misstep as an opportunity to grow. How can we shift the mindset of a willing participant to help rid the word failure of all, it’s nasty sting. Thanks again for everything you do.

Look forward to hearing your answer.

Then I love this project. I want to just highlight though that failure experiencing failure isn’t the point. It turns out it’s a fear of failure. That’s the problem to paraphrase FDR not fear, but the fear of fear, it’s the whole idea of what we say or do to avoid even feeling like we might confront fear.

This is one of the Changes of teaching someone to swim if there’s three feet of water two feet of water. Every rational thought says it is not dangerous to stand in 2 feet of water with a swimming instructor standing next to you but most people who are afraid of swimming will not do this and it’s not because they are afraid of drowning it’s because they’re afraid of the fear.

And so what we have is a chance to engage in a practice of getting ourselves closer to the Feeling of fear back to the swimming example a dear friend. I taught them how to swim in the following way. I bought some inexpensive scuba goggles. We went to the pool Sat by the side of the pool and I filled the goggles with water. So we’re sitting on Solid Ground And I said, let’s put the goggles on over our eyes and nose so you can still breathe through your mouth every single synapse in your brain is telling you that you’re Ting On Solid Ground you’re not even wet except for your face. You’re breathing through your mouth.

But when you open your eyes, it looks like you’re underwater if we can reprogram our brain in that way. We’re able to get to the next step. So the same thing is true here as we approach our practice which is to develop the habit of feeling fear. We don’t need to hurt other people through our practice of failure.

We simply need to confront for Folks what it feels like to get that close to it. Here’s one more to wrap up our bonus edition of QA.

Hey Seth, this is Mickey from Atlanta Georgia in your last episode. You said that personality tests are essentially horoscopes and I don’t tend to agree. I do agree that personality test shouldn’t limit who we are or what we do, but I find that personality tests can be a great way to gain empathy for others as the owner of a small company. I thought it was best if I treat my employees nicely that’s not really the case being Nice is nice, but they need to be treated differently through personality test. I learned that one employee really enjoys 10 minutes chitchat each morning before we start but another would go Bonkers with 10 minutes of chitchat understanding those differences is huge in related vein. My wife is a to on the Enneagram which makes for a quote helper as we unpack that it means not only does she go out of her way to help others, which is obvious to anyone that needs her that she innately thinks that others can see her knees just as easily which we can’t discovering that has been great for both of our perspectives.

So my question is am I off base here are personality tests just horoscopes or can they help us better understand the people around us. Thanks for all you do.

Thank you for this Mickey. Yes, there’s no doubt in my mind that personality tests are astrology their horoscopes.

But there’s also no doubt in my mind that horoscopes work.

They’re just not true, but they work they work because a well-written horoscope that lands on a receptive person’s desk helps them find their truth helps them dig through the stuff that they have been fibbing to themselves about and so your wife was sounds like a fine individual may have gotten a Certain score on some personality test, but even if she didn’t get that score it would be about a defect in the test. That’s not about her and a conversation getting to know somebody is a much more direct way than the bank shot of figuring out what score they got on some profit-making test regime so that person who doesn’t like 10 minutes of chitchat with you in the morning.

Well, it might make more sense to figure out. Level of intimacy and mutual trust that they could just tell you that because there’s lots of things that you need people to tell you that aren’t going to come through in a personality test. So my problem with these tests is not that they don’t occasionally come out with horoscope like truths.

The problem is when they’re wrong people don’t know what to do when they’re wrong people get hooked on the results and make bad choices instead of speaking actual truth. About what they’re facing. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution, or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea to anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -tim-toady- <==

And our guest today is Tim Toady. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second with a discussion with Tim. But first here’s a message from our sponsor.

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As you know, this podcast has no guests. That’s not the way you’re supposed to do it. When I started out a lot of people who were going to work with this podcast questioned the idea that it had no guests now more than a hundred episodes later. It seems to be working out. Okay, but what about Tim Toady?

What about Tim Toadies? Cousin Tim tody bicarbonate. What about the idea of intentional? Action you may have guessed the Tim Toady is not a real person. Tim Toady is an acronym from the Perl programming language. It’s sort of stands for there is more than one way to do it. What does that mean? It means that in the Perl programming language. One of the ideas is that you could do something a little different than the standard way. In fact that there isn’t a standard way you could Inte one way you could print a different way or if you wanted to you could use a more verbose way to cause the program to print this undermines a lot of engineering thinking engineering thinking the idea of benchmarking of finding the right tool for the job and then no longer looking for the right tool enables us to build up traditions of productivity.

That’s why Tim Tony’s cousin is named Tim tody bicarbonate which sort of stands for there’s more than one way to do it, but sometimes consistency is not a bad thing either.

So intentional action, who’s it for what’s it for? What exactly are you trying to do? And who are you trying to do it for the hammer has been around a long time. Is it possible to bang in a nail with your shoe? Yeah, I guess it’s possible. Sometimes if the wood is soft enough but there’s a right way to do it use a hammer certain things you’re building. Should use a screw not a hammer.

Is it possible to use a hammer and a nail not a screw and a screw driver? Of course it is but will it get you the desired result when I started my blog back before blogging was a thing there were times when my blog had comments on it. But over time I came to the conclusion that comments were getting in the way of what I sought to do Anonymous comments from people who Not understand what I had posted that day were causing me to second-guess the way that I was writing.

They were causing me to hesitate before I wrote something. They were causing me to get less specific and more General anticipating the comments. I was going to get tomorrow and I realized I had a choice I could have a Blog with comments but no posts because I was never going to post again or I could have a Blog with no comments and when I turned off comments a bunch of People were really upset and what they said is it’s not a Blog it’s not a Blog if you don’t have comments you’re doing it wrong and this idea of you’re doing it wrong gets in the way of us often doing something that’s important or creative or brave because if you’re doing something that’s creative.

You’re probably not following the established path that if you are hammering in a nail so exactly the way everyone else hammers in a nail you might be doing it right at least according to the current standard, but you’re not doing anything creative. So back to the idea of who’s it for and what’s it for what change are we seeking to make who are we seeking to do this work for and with because if you can’t be specific about that, then you’re probably simply doing it for yourself and if you’re doing it for yourself. No way for anyone else to tell if you’re doing a good job. Go ahead entertain yourself. Knock yourself out. Do it any way you want to but for the rest of us if we are trying to build something change something contribute something we are doing it for someone else and that gets us back to Tim Toady because if we need to solve a problem for example taking someone’s blood pressure we have to Choices we can invest a lot of time and energy making up a new way to take someone’s blood pressure or we can take someone’s blood pressure the standard way.

If you are a nurse the standard way seems to make sense because then you can get back to what you’re there for the patient that’s right in front of you. However, if the standard way isn’t going to work for whatever reason then your creativity in that area. Is essential we engage with somebody a little while ago in one of our workshops? And she said she hates to follow rules.

And so she started doing things outside of the structure of how we had built the workshop. This is a little like driving on the wrong side of the road driving on the wrong side of the road is not a creative act driving on the wrong side of the road simply violates a rule because you can violate a rule and it is likely to make traffic significantly.

Less efficient than if you had followed the rule to be creative means to be clear about why we’re doing it in the first place to solve the problem that is in front of us. So yes, if a tree is down on the side of the road and you need to get somewhere in a hurry and the road is deserted crossing the double yellow line and driving on the other side is a creative solution to the problem. That is in Front of you back when I was in college. We had an engineering project what happens if there’s a rack inside the Callahan tunnel in Boston.

How could we possibly get the tow truck in there to get the jackknifed tractor-trailer out from inside the tunnel because the traffic is going to back up all the way to South Boston. Well, the answer was go the wrong way because on the other side there is no traffic at all because because the down truck stopped all the cars that were behind it.

That’s a creative solution because we are clear about what the problem is. Is there another way to solve the problem sure there is I don’t know you could get a submersible pump put a boat out above the tunnel submerge the pump drill a hole. I don’t know we can go on and on it depends on what you are seeking to do.

And so what we need to distinguish between our Knowledge and facility with existing methods and tools because the method that is being used is already good enough because our job our promise is not the solve the problem a new way, but to use the standard tools to solve the problem the efficient way so we can get back to work which is the change we seek to make but sometimes we sign up for something else sometimes.

We sign up for art for creativity for changing the system itself. If that is what we sought to do. Then of course, you have to do it a different way. Of course, you have to say there’s more than one way to do it because if there’s only one way to do it, you have no business working on the project. So when I think about interventions in existing systems they tend to Be the most productive when we do them on purpose and if we’re doing them on purpose, we should be able to announce in advance what we seek to do measure me on this measure me on that. Is there more than one way to broadcast the football game while in the 1960s they were all broadcast about the same way, but then someone came along and added multiple cameras and then someone else figured out how to do instant replay.

Which amazingly for more than 20 years was done by hand slowing down the reels as they went through the machine and then John Madden figured out how to write on the screen with a pen each one of these new ways to do. It had a purpose. The purpose was to get more viewer engagement. The purpose was to get the ratings to go up so that they could sell more ads either they worked or they didn’t work.

So when Tim Toady shows up, Up, we have to asked him the following question. Are you here just to be interesting just to be difficult just so that we will pay attention to you or are you here because you’re going to show us a better way to do it a way to achieve more of our goals something that’s little understood about the programming business is stack overflow stack Overflow an extraordinary website that gets more than a billion visits a year to help programmers find Other programmers who will generously show them the right way to solve a problem by becoming the world’s largest repository of the right way to use a programming language to solve a problem.

The act of programming has become significantly easier and the power of what’s built keeps getting better because you can find Snippets of code that have been battle tested that work that the who’s it for in the what’s it for? Course clear and you can assemble them into a new thing a better thing built on proven building blocks.

So I’m in favor of Our Guest today Tim Toady when he needs to be there to do something better. But the rest of the time his cousin Tim Toady bicarbonate which means there’s more than one way to do it but doing it consistently is going to save the rest of us a lot of trouble. Send him in instead. Thanks for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back in a second with answers to questions from last time, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp an independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work. I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit. Akimbo.com go to find out about their new. Upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks.

It’s Maria.

Hey Seth. My name is Kyle reading sound. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is on the Pain Scale entire sir.

Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I love to hear from you. If you got a question about this or any previous episode, please visit akimbo link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2sd. Click the appropriate Button as we head into a new year a fresh new year Blue Skies open powder a chance to make things better. I am thrilled by the questions you’re submitting by the possibilities that you are surfacing. I’ve got 4qa to go through today. So here we go.

Hi, Seth, Carrie and London England here.

Thank you so much for inspiring us every day. I’m a huge fan of your work your blog and really try to live by all the advice. You’ve given us. My question today is what is the best way to evoke Inspirations and creativity to a workplace and Workforce that has been, you know quite complacent for a long time.

I’m currently working. In for a company that has been the voice known for its thought-provoking creativity decades ago, but seem have really lost that spark over the last, you know few years of operations and then think the management team sees the need to injecting new ideas new thoughts and energy but really having a problem trying to convince its employees to think and act differently and you know quoting your purple cow try to make their work.

Thank you for this Cherry. Here’s the thing culture is local and culture is temporary. There are people who work in your organization who remember how it used to be but remembering how it used to be is different than knowing how it is now and companies that have long-standing employees tend to have more persistent culture when there’s lots of turnover. There’s lots of opportunities to start fresh. It’s not the Doing that determines the culture. It’s the simple question. What are things like around here? And if people are holding back if people are nervous if people are afraid it’s because they are getting the signal that it’s not going to work whatever new thing. They’d like to bring to the table. That signal is probably coming from Senior Management. That is afraid and Senior Management is afraid because of the ghosts of Senior Management that was there before. For them and so we see that downward spiral. That’s so many businesses go through because something gets a little bit run down just a little bit less money.

And so if there’s a little bit less money than things aren’t quite as well done and around and around it goes and it takes a burst of innovation positivity optimistic leadership to turn the cycle around and so yes, you see the relevance to the world we live in right now, we’re months away. From a vaccine we are taking a deep breath and thinking about what’s going to happen going forward and it’s easy to think about what was happening last month or six months ago because nothing is perfect. Nothing is fixed all at once and that gets back to my point about it all being local if three people are five people together in an office on a zoom call decide what things are like around here.

It will become what they say. It is like it. Not be perfect. It will not be applauded by everyone in the organization, but you can make it that way just as what’s going on in one English seminar is different than what’s going on in an engineering class down the hall. It is possible to create these Pockets these pockets of optimism, but it’s only going to happen when people who are seen as having Authority and Status start demonstrating not talking but demonstrating what things are like around here.

I hope that You a little bit of a way to start on this process I said, this is Alberto from Argentina.

First of all, I wanted to thank you for showing up every week with a new episode. My question is related to things that I’ve been listening and reading in the practice mainly and is related to my audience. I feel that I have something to give to show and I really want to commit to that and the liver.

But on the other hand that I’m not sure who is my audience. So I feel kind of stuck because I don’t start producing because I’m not sure who am I producing for but on the other hand if I don’t start I will never know who is my audience. So I’m kind of stuck in this Loop and I would like your advice and your comments that will be really helpful.

Thank you, Alberto. Yes, the Catch-22 is clear and it’s an easy one to follow. All into here is my Mantra pick your audience pick your future. If you decide to serve people who are difficult to find difficult to close the sale with difficult to serve then that’s the life you’ve signed up for if you decide to serve people who know they need what you do and have money and are eager to pay for it.

Then that’s the life that you signed up for if you pick a board of directors that is constantly busting your chops. Well, that’s the life. If you signed up for pick your customers pick your future, so I would argue that rather than starting with customers start with future. What do you want things to be like where you work with the work that you do who will give you the fuel you need to serve them and then once you figured that out try to discover if there’s anybody who fits that description and if there isn’t adjust your sights and repeat pick your customers pick your future.

My name is Michelle burrow, and I’m from a small town outside Amsterdam. The Netherlands is a multiple akimbo workshops alumni. And as a reader of most of your books, I started implementing bit by bit you’re advised to regularly ship about three years ago. I wanted to change the world and I still do and make it more sustainable and circular because I had no experience at all in this field and no one would hire me. I started looking doing sales. Work on spec for free for a small company that I really admire we agreed that I would get reasonable commission for every successful lead that results in a sale this I have been doing now for three years with no substantial results so far until the last few weeks some prospects now see me as credible and want to listen to my story and some have expressed serious interest to buy.

In the beginning however, and until very recently the nose felt like a real disappointment. It seems that was going nowhere this journey somehow feels like driving in the fork on the straight road at 60 miles an hour with very restricted view the thing I knew for sure is that the only thing that could get me out of this Focus driving on with the knowledge that the landscape and the rewards would receive reveal itself.

I could have walked this path because of two things. I was completely done with my previous. Job, and I wanted to change very badly and I had saved enough money to sustain for three years. Secondly. I must admit that your ongoing rants about shipping and letting my own voice be heard has been the main motivator.

My question is what advice would you give how to decide where and when the moment arrives to stop and start something else for me? It’s been three years now and only now in the past. Let’s say two weeks. I can see an exciting glimmer of hope and I that I can and will be successful if it wasn’t for the financial reserve. I would have had to stop perhaps or two years ago in that case.

I would not have been able to get to this point where the fog slowly evaporates.

Thank you for everything. Thank you for this Michelle and thank you for the work that you are doing. I applaud your dedication to making a difference but one of the things we know about getting through the dip one of the things we How about making a difference is that we need two things resilience and it’s cousin diversity resilience because it takes longer than we think it will resilience because the world rarely ends up the way we expect it to and diversity because if we have a diverse portfolio, then we’re okay. If one thing we were counting on doesn’t come through and I don’t know anything about The details of what you’re doing, but if you are in the spot, it sounds like you were on it’s probably because there’s some combination missing of resilience in the face of resistance from the people you are trying to sell to and diversity because you’ve put all of your eggs into a basket and one of the things we learned from the Dip is that you have to push and persist to get through it.

But the other thing we know is that it really helps to have a diverse portfolio. That you can stick it out long enough to get through the dip so I can offer you no reassurance because I don’t know enough and because reassurance is futile, but what I can say to you and others who are in a similar situation is we can’t just keep betting on Reddit coming up we have to persist in being unfair agonal we have to realize that the world rarely comes out the way we hope but that we have to have enough resources to power our way through because the work we’re doing is important. Not enough to dedicate ourselves in that way.

Hey Seth.

This is actually from Kaysville Utah love the podcast one of the most paradigm-shifting podcast I’ve ever listened to I just finished listening to your podcast on the New York Times bestseller list. I do them in the publishing industry and although we know that bestseller lists are dying. It’s still what I would call bit of addiction to try and get onto we don’t worry about the New York Times bestseller list.

I’d love to know about the Wall Street Journal bestseller list from your point of view. We try to hit it with every book launch that we have within our company. Sometimes we hit it sometimes we don’t we recently launched a book that I felt deserved to be on it. We legitimately and ethically did everything we could to give on the list. We had the numbers but because of MPD books can we are kicked off because the bulk sales I’d love to hear your thoughts on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list as well as being able to shift the mindset of people to not be quote unquote addicted to the list if that’s something you agree with. Thanks again Seth and thanks for changing the world. I’m trying to do what I can with my thoughts.

Thank you Zach for this and for publishing books that people really want to read the question is pretty simple That Wall Street Journal bestseller list. What’s it for if it’s an internal measure of whether you and your team are doing a good job? Well, then when they have a policy that boxes you out now and then don’t worry about it on the other hand.

If you believe it is a label that helps you sell books to people who like buying bestsellers then A challenge you to find a more reliable label figure out a way to message people that that book is a book worth reading because the fact is if you’re focused on business books and the Wall Street Journal list, you only trying to sell two point one percent of the people in the population less than 1% So, who are they looking to who is curating for them making great books books that people choose to talk about is reliably the single best way to make a difference in book publishing promotion doesn’t really work either. You’re already super famous in the books going to sell no matter. What or you write a book that ten people tell ten people about because 10 times 10 times 10 quickly gets us to a thousand and then you’re off to the races Sean coin taught me very simply the author and the publisher is job is to sell the first 10,000 copies and That it’s the books job to sell the rest.

Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you all next time.

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right. Is it puts you.

In a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah.

Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information.

That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you got to show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple.

It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason why Why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -postage-due- <==

Selling a vacation timeshare is a difficult challenge years ago. I guy I know was on vacation in Aruba and there was a place that was selling vacation time shares what they did was they offered anyone who came in a free t-shirt and a steak dinner if they would sit through a two-hour sales call about why they should buy the timeshare.

Most of us would not sacrifice two hours of a hard earned vacation. Ian to sit through a sales call to get a steak dinner and a t-shirt but this guy did it more than once. In fact almost every day of the vacation. He’d saunter over and do it again. Well a couple years into this process, they installed a computer and the computer enabled them to see that he had been coming again and again and they said I’m sorry sir.

No more steak dinners for you well to teach them a lesson. Bought a timeshare. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about attention, but first ironically enough. Here’s a message from our sponsor.

Creative isn’t who you are. It’s what you do along the way creativity has gotten a mystical rap as if it’s some sort of gift. It’s not it’s a choice. It’s a skill if you have a job where you get to decide what you do, you are a creative it work in creative and you can get better at it. I’m thrilled to say that the creatives workshop is back the most active of all the akimbo workshops. It’s about people who want to level up and make a difference with their creative. Work. I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com.

Go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a ruckus. Like many people who have been thinking about the internet for a long time. I’ve been writing and talking about the attention economy. For more than 30 years the attention economy contrasts two different words words that didn’t used to be next to each other economy, which is based on scarcity things of value things that we pay for the transfer of funds and attention something everyone gets exactly The same amount of something that disappears at the end of every day.

So the question is if we live in a world where the internet is bringing us an abundance of choice and abundance of information a place where we can connect and learn and discover things almost all of it for free. How do we deal with the fact that attention is becoming more scarce than ever before when Dale Evans? And I wrote one of the guerrilla marketing books years ago. We had the controversial fact in it that the average person sees 3,000 advertisements a day today. I think it’s easy to argue that that number is at least 50,000 advertisements by the time you’re done surfing on your phone for an hour. You have seen links and pop-ups and pop-unders and audio not to mention the Billboards the ads in the elevator and on and on Advertising has been The heart of our media culture for a very long time advertising works for a really neat reason. It is a tiny tax on the people who consume the media seconds out of every minute but a huge bun at scale to the people who create the media so a full-page ad in Good Housekeeping magazine used to cost $80,000 that pays for a lot. Out of reporting for the magazine it pays for the print it pays for their offices etcetera $80,000.

However, each person who was reading the magazine can just blow by that ad and they don’t really mind. In fact if it’s a magazine with a topic you care about like Vogue, I think most people who read Vogue magazine would prefer an issue with ads then an issue without ads the Yellow Pages of course is the best example of this because Yellow Pages was nothing but adds you read it because advertisers competed for your attention by buying a bigger ad and a bigger ad sent a signal to the person who was allocating attention that said this pizza place this auto dealer.

This restaurant is high status enough successful enough cares enough about your attention to buy a really big ad and so we built a media infrastructure the one That has defined huge swathes of our culture for Generations. It’s the media culture that brings us the news that brings us entertainment every once in a while somebody like HBO or Netflix shows up and they walk away from the ad based model instead saying to a select group of people know, why don’t you just pay for this and we’ll leave the advertisers out of the equation.

Which brings us to my friend Kevin Kelly Kevin Kelly the founding editor of Wired Magazine the person who coined the phrase 1,000 true fans the author of The astonishing what technology wants has brought up an idea that has been around for a really long time since the dawn of email and that idea is that maybe we could cut out the media middleman and pay the person who is getting the ad to read it that if attention is valuable let the people who own the attention that’s you and me decide which adds we’re going to see and let’s figure out how to make sure we get compensated to do that.

Well, this isn’t really a new idea if we think about the origins of the post office in the United States it started before the Revolutionary War Ben Franklin was our first Postmaster General, but what most people don’t know is it wasn’t until After Franklin was long dead that every single letter had to have a stamp on it partly because they didn’t invent the adhesive for stamps until the eighteen hundreds.

But mostly because the original way that mail was sent was postage due a ship captain would collect up mail that people wanted to go to a new town when he got to town. He’d run an ad an ad put it up on a flyer and List the names of all the people he had mail for and if you wanted your mail, you would go to this ship captain and pay him so you could get your letter and so for the first Decades of the Postal Service when the mailman came to your home, you owed him money.

It came postage due. Well, we can turn this model around and say wait a minute what if in my email box instead of spammers stealing my attention? Spammers advertisers direct marketers could Vie to pay me to read their email. Well, you’re probably ahead of me. There are some real challenges here. Here are the two big ones challenge number one our cost in the tension of processing. The offers is high deciding which ones you’re going to read is a cost you have to incur for which you are not compensated number two. Even more important far more important is the challenge of moral hazard. Moral hazard is a term from insurance. And what moral hazard means is that if you have a really good insurance policy on your house, you might have an incentive to burn it down.

You might have an incentive to do something that both sides would argue is not in your interest. However, you’re getting paid to burn down your house. Well in the case of reading ads who exactly is going to stop what they’re doing for a nickel and read an ad a nickel. Well, my guess is the person is willing to take a nickel to read an ad is not the person The Advertiser wants to reach the CMO of Mercedes famously said that it cost them about a thousand dollars in advertising to sell one Mercedes.

Now if they knew that they could just hand someone a thousand dollars and they would buy a Mercedes. They would do it all day every day, but they don’t know and so they have to keep running ads in lots and lots of places. They have to sponsor Polo matches. They have to put ads in the New Yorker. They have to figure out how to be in front of people who would never take a nickel to read an ad because that’s the only way brand advertising of a luxury good is going to work which opens the door to thinking about affiliate deals.

All marketing and direct marketing. So do the direct marketing model First Direct marketing is marketing. We can measure we know exactly who clicked on it and what they did after they clicked on it. So if you realize that it’s worth a dollar to you to have someone see and add and click on it. Well, then you can run as many ads as you can find for 50 Cent’s all day every day because you know, it’s going to work direct marketing used to be a little Backwater. It was named by Lester wunderman.

An old friend of mine back in the day and Lester who also pioneered the American Express card and the Columbia record Club said that direct marketing was action marketing that we could see it and we could measure it but it wasn’t a big high-profile way for most marketers to do their work, but then the internet showed up Google is a direct marketing engine.

They show the numbers to everybody you can see what’s working. And what’s not and then you bid. To run the next dad Facebook is direct marketing driven. Now the math of direct marketing is very compelling for the middleman for Facebook and Google. Here’s why let’s say that it’s worth $6 to get someone to click on an ad and you have a competitor who decides it’s worth $6 if someone click on an ad, what does that mean worth? $6?

It means you’re some profit all of it from that one new customer is Dollars, okay, but now there are two of you bidding on placing that ad if the auction gets up to five bucks. Are you willing to bid five dollars in 10 cents? You probably are well at $5.90 the auction slows down but here’s what’s interesting of the six dollars of profit that you were going to earn from all of your investment in all of your hard work $5.90. If it goes to Google and you get ten cents, that’s not a great deal.

That’s like paying your landlord. It’s not fun. So direct marketing has scaled. It has scaled dramatically. What about affiliate marketing affiliate marketing you might know about this from the way Amazon and others have done. It is someone a middleman gets paid a bounty for bringing in a customer Uber for a long time said that if you go ahead and get us a new user will give you $30 and free rides Tesla still pays people. But hundreds or thousands of dollars for referring someone who buys a Tesla one of the challenges of affiliate marketing is it umin iziz referrals, but we don’t necessarily want the referrals in our life to be bought and paid for there’s a real difference between a friend saying I heard this new song. It’s fantastic and a friend saying I heard this new song. I’m going to get 24 cents if you listen to it.

We don’t want our friends to sell us out and that’s why multi-level marketing has failed to scale Beyond a small Niche because most people are uncomfortable selling out their friends for money and people who are sold out sometimes reconsider their friendships. And so we have a problem and the problem is when we start to monetize something Newman and personal like attention the monetization. Corrupts, it corrupts Behavior. It corrupts The Way We Walk Through the world. So we have these two problems one this idea that we’re gonna have to sort through the postage do stuff that’s showing up to decide which ones we want to take the money from and which ones aren’t worth our time and second the affiliate model of getting paid in the moment for our attention add to this the moral hazard and the fact that you probably don’t don’t want attention from people who will sell it for a nickel and we see the challenge the challenge going forward of the attention economy capitalism has tried to monetize so many things that they say the oldest profession is one in which people will sell their bodies to others and ever since then capitalism has been trying to infringe around the edges of what it means to be a person.

What it means to be a friend what it means to be in a community Circle, but now that everyone runs a media company now that everybody is either working for free for a social media company or working for money inside of some sort of social media environment. We’ve already opened the door to this sort of questioning.

So how then to regain the thing that we hold dear. How do we gain the idea that we would like there to be mad? Has eans TV shows newspapers that aren’t in it to maximize clicks that are being measured in the short run everyday by direct marketers because it’s that pressure from the direct marketers that is leading to click bait that is leading to short-term thinking from media that we used to count on to be more upstanding.

The old days the old days of just three TV networks. It’s easy to look back on them and say well there are a whole bunch of voices. We didn’t get to hear from there were a whole bunch of choices. We didn’t get to make but the flip side is this if you own a third of all the TV channels in the neighborhood and you were regulated by the FCC you knew that you had to do some things in the public service and you also were aware that in the long run the advertisers who couldn’t measure Sure, what was working wanted to run their ads in places where there was media that they were proud of that racing to the bottom coming up with the equivalent of the National Enquirer on TV. Well sure that might get you advertising from people who want to sell gold bullion or life insurance in the middle of the night, but it wasn’t the media that media Titans aspired to make and so now here we are having blown that up having blown up the oligopoly having welcomed the The long tail of voices and noise still with the open API that is email where everyone gets to send postage due email every day because we have to pay with our attention that when their money we have a challenge.

So a couple things that I worked on years ago that I want to bring up again because they might not work but they’re interesting to think about the first one is this I sat down with the heads of AOL and a couple other big sites. This was probably 1998 and I said, let’s charge for stamps. Let’s make it so that email costs a penny give every single one of your users a thousand stamps a month for free and if you need more than a thousand if you’re going to send more than a thousand emails a month, they’re going to cost you a penny each.

Let’s take the money that people are spending. On stamps and use it to build all sorts of useful infrastructure for the people who use email. So what would be the net result of this while the net result would be that it would be mostly a zero-sum game of money coming in coming out except for Outsiders Outsiders would need to buy a ton of stamps.

If you’re going to be a spammer and send 10 million emails in one day, which is no big deal for a spammer that’s going to cost you $100,000 in stamps. But the open nature of the egalitarian mindset of the TCP IP based internet is no no, there isn’t going to be a centralized Authority that sell stamps.

Well, I for one think stamps would be really interesting and change the dynamic of how people might choose to buy attention at least in email. And then the second thing about building an economy where you are compensated for attention part of the problem, of course was how do we Do we spend our time deciding what to spend our attention on?

So when I was at Yahoo. I came up with this idea of simoleons at the time. Yahoo was the internet it was the center of all of it. And I said, why don’t we do this? Why don’t we just have a little tiny number next to every single link throughout all of Yahoo next to the ads and next to the other links.

And if you click on any of them will add that number of points to your simoleons balance, so, If an Advertiser wants a lot of clicks, they could put 50 or 70 or 90 next to their ad they have to buy the simoleons to top up everyone’s account. And then once it started catching on we could let other sites in on the Somalian economy.

So what good are simoleons what good are frequent flyer miles if you can’t fly anywhere how to empty out people’s balances. So this was the cool part. We got a patent on this the way to empty out people’s balances I said, Ed was every month. We’ll have an auction. We will auction off millions of dollars of cool prizes and services. Some of them will be donated by sponsor. Some of them will buy from the money. We got from selling Simoleons.

And here’s the thing you can trade and give away your simoleons because Guess what at the end of every month we zero out everybody’s balance. So you might as well bid like a maniac What this would lead to is an economy where some people don’t care at all but other people seeing that they had these points maybe they could sell them to a peer who wanted to collect a bunch of points and win an auction.

Maybe they could donate them to charity or on and on what I like about this model is a it’s more fun, but be it creates a media middleman so that all of these points are added up in a place where they matter so it’s not a nickel or a dime at a time. A fund a fund to gets used to pay for things that are actually worth reading and actually worth listening to so now you’re not going to get a steak dinner just because you showed up to listen to a sales call.

Anyway, that’s my rant. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with three questions from previous episodes, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Hey Seth, this is Andy from Los Angeles. And my question is about scalping over the last few months. There have been a number of big Hardware releases in the entertainment industry the new Xbox PlayStation five and various PC gaming Parts. All these products have sold out incredibly faster now showing up on eBay and other websites for sometimes double the normal price.

And this doesn’t appear to be a small number of people doing this. There was one group of Scholars that claim to have 3500 PlayStation Vibes. How can companies stop the scholars and make sure that their product? Will the hands it was made for at lunch? Maybe it’s as simple as increasing. The number of product the company has on hand, but what would stop this Kappa from just buying more?

And is there any motivation for these huge companies to do that? When at the end of the day, they’re still selling their product. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for getting us started Andy up companies want two things. One thing they want to do is maximize the revenue in the short run and the second thing they want to do is create an impact. They want there to be buzzed. They want there to be cultural significance to what they do. The best way to maximize revenue is with price differentiation to charge different people different amounts based on who they are what they need and the story they tell themselves about money.

Someone’s only got ten bucks to see a concert. Well charge him 10 bucks. If someone’s going to get satisfaction out of sitting in the front row, which is only 20 rows in front of the other person and the status that comes from buying a luxury good to cost more charge that person $100. The economics here are clear price differentiation is the way to maximize Revenue now scalping has been around a very long time and until recently it was incredibly difficult to put a stop to to in the old days Kmart sold Polaroid film cheaper, then the local store could buy it wholesale.

So local stores would go and buy their film from Kmart so that they could save a couple pennies eBay came along and started to add a digital component to how we could buy in one place and sell to another the increment the money saved. The money earned didn’t go to the manufacturer in went to the Upper the person who was hustling to make the market more efficient, which is where this second element of cultural change kicks in because the brand manager knows that they’re not making as much money as if they were priced differentiating but they also know it’s a lot of work to do price differentiation. There’s leakage and if it creates buzz if that concert sells out in 20 minutes, it’s great for the artist to be able to Proclaim. It sold out. Out even if it means that a third of the tickets went to scalpers who then keep the difference for doing the work they’re doing which is creating this whole other level of Buzz. It’s pretty clear in an age where we are selling direct more and more that it’s trivially easy to eliminate scalping because as soon as someone starts buying more than one or two of an item, we can just stop selling it to them in the last four years. It’s become really clear how easy it is to stop people.

From scalping tickets to a theater or a concert but a lot of times the industry in quotation marks doesn’t want that to happen because the status quo is built around these different levels of people marking things up. If we think about how the airlines have done this if one day in the future when we’re flying again, you look around the plane. It is certain that there are people on that plane who paid less than you and people on that plane who paid more than you for the privilege of being on the very same plane jaywalker founded Priceline with a really brilliant idea.

He said look business Travelers want convenience, but tourists tourists are willing to go through a hassle to save some money. So he went to the Airlines and he said I’m going to do price differentiation. I’m going to sell your leftover tickets really cheap and there I said, well, we don’t want you to do that because once business Travelers find out that they can get cheap tickets from you.

We won’t be able to price differentiate. Well, he said I won’t tell them what airline it is. And I’m going to give him so much hassle so much emotional challenge that no business Travelers going to go through the pain and suffering to save 200 bucks and for years and years. It worked by charging people something that wasn’t involving cash.

He was able to differentiate the price so is all along way of saying we could get rid of scalping if the companies really wanted to but I think what we’re seeing is that see Heroes and brand managers are deciding that the ease of unloading a lot of stuff combined with the cultural impact of seeing that it’s in high demand that there’s a line that people are bidding up the price is worth it because in the long run, they see that they’re going to profit from that one last decide on this years and years ago in the 1980s.

I met Bill Graham the great concert promoter and I asked him. How come if you can sell out of Bruce Springsteen concert in 15 minutes. You don’t charge way more for the tickets and he turned to me and he said look, I know how much money the people in my audience have to spend every year on concert and I could charge enough for one Bruce Springsteen ticket that I use up their whole budget, but then they won’t be back next week for the next artist.

So I’m here for the long run and I’d rather have loyal consistent concertgoers than take all the money all at once what was on mentioned? His answer and I don’t think it was naivete because he was really smart is as soon as you do something like that. The scalpers are going to step in and fix the market.

They’re going to fix it by buying as many cheap tickets as they can and selling them for as much as they can. So thanks for the question Buy Low sell High.

Hey Seth, this is Richard calling in from Hong Kong.

I run a headhunting company in Asia and A lot of what you referenced culture versus what we perceive or what Society perceives what we can do I think a big roadblock and Barrow we have to that is this this piece of paper we call the resume and the CV and it’s such a purposeful but overinflated and value document and I believe companies have a huge advantage.

To shift away from such a material. How can we get them to look beyond the resume in the story? I believe companies don’t hire people with Stewart resumes. I believe they hire people with stories. So the biggest challenge that I see for people going on their own to look for jobs right now is to get past the algorithm to get past the recruiter or the Headhunter who doesn’t know the role because it’s very systematic the way that recruitment processes and hiring processes work their processors, but they’re not designed to get the best out of someone.

So how can companies its scale start to get to this new Behavior without sacrificing the so-called efficiency that they all look for would love to hear your thoughts and looking forward to the four-week-old MBA Take Care.

Thank you for this Richard. I’ve been ranting about this since I wrote linchpin a long time ago. Most companies don’t actually want extraordinary employees performing at an extraordinary level as it’s written in the e-myth Revisited book The goal of most companies is to hire the cheapest available most easily replaceable person for any given job because it gives them reliability.

It gives them flexibility. It means that the org chart is filled with boxes. And if you don’t want to fill your box anymore, I’ll just find someone else. to fill it companies may talk about the fact that that’s not what they’re looking for and a few people who hire a Headhunter like you actually want the linchpin the special person the person who stands out and so we’re going to see I believe a bifurcated model the first one which were already seeing in things like big box stores is that you can apply for a job using a machine that looks a lot like an ATM you answer a questions you type in your social security number you’re hired because A quite rightly say we just want to see how you’re going to work when you’re at that cash register if you can show up every day, you can stay here that is different than pretending that it matters where you went to high school that it matters what your GPA was because guess what it doesn’t and these organizations that are running at scale.

They realize that because they have created jobs computer-assisted computer dominated that are all about being cogs in a machine. And if you’ve got cogs in the machine, probably it pays to admit that that’s what you’ve got. But then we’ve got the linchpin jobs. Then we’ve got the jobs that need to be done by somebody who is bringing soft skills real skills attitudes points of view Innovation willingness to upset the apple cart somebody who is going in their own Direction who has a story we should be acknowledging that that’s what those jobs are and a resume doesn’t help us decode that at all.

Resume is just a list of where you have complied. It is a collection of famous brand names to show that you came from privilege that you have paid your dues resume doesn’t help us you’re right. What we need is a body of work a collection of testimonials and most of all story and that’s going to happen for your clients the ones who care enough when they really want what we call Talent which I call skill and attitude and for the rest of the job. As we should just acknowledge.

We’re putting on a show, but we’re really hiring a cog. And so I think interviews are overrated I think resumes are overrated. What we should care about is the work and the approach to the work.

Asif Liam from Chicago here. I had the pleasure of listening to you visiting on Debbie millman’s podcast and it was a great conversation. I couldn’t help but notice a certain moment of Discord when she was asking you about authenticity and it seemed the two of you kind of missed a little bit of each other’s point of view on the difference between Authenticity of work and authenticity of self and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s a distinction that trips a lot of people up. So I would love to hear you expand a little bit more on that difference and how it plays out. Thanks a lot for everything you do. Bye.

Thanks Liam. It’s true in my new book The Practice. I have a rant about authenticity and I’ve driven straight into a misunderstanding semantically about what authenticity means. Authenticity of work as you so brilliantly coin it means that the work is in and of itself it reminds us of what the work is supposed to be.

It shows the hand of the Creator but it is not about the Creator or the Creator’s mood. It is about the promise what the work is supposed to be that when the work is authentic we can tell because it has a Total truth to it. It is in and of itself as I just said and the other hand authenticity of self.

Are you proud of the work you are doing are you seeking a feeling of flow? What does it mean to be you that is a story We Tell ourselves and that is not your audience is problem.

It is your problem.

You need to make the difficult decision to quit your job at the cigarette company because you cannot authentically be you. You at the same time you are marketing. Tobacco that yes, authenticity of self is vitally important to not have it is to have an empty life that your job is not to support the industrial economy.

The industrial economy is here and your job is to figure out a path through it that feels and works for you authentically. But once you define that path, what will be asked of you required of you is the author City of work to be able to do the work that you said you were going to do to cause the change you seek to make thanks for these great questions.

We’ll see you next time.

I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea. Where you know and none of us can do that better than the internet right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when are you going to face those fears?

Not gonna let you hide you got to show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical. But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information.

We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-architecture-of-architecture- <==

For more than a hundred years starting in the 1830s. The center of downtown Boston was scollay Square. You could get your picture taken. If you wanted to you could visit the first dentist who used ether to reduce pain when he worked on your teeth, but in the 1960s, they tore down scollay Square tearing down 1,000 buildings and displacing tens of thousands of people they did it to build. Government center now in February Boston is a cold and windy city and inside of government center inside the plaza that they want to call a Town Square. It is colder and windier than anywhere else in all of Boston.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

Be back in a second to talk about the architecture of architecture, but first here is a message from our sponsor.

One day Pawan brought a book home from school and read me a couple of poems from it. That was the first time I’d ever heard. My son read out loud. Those words came from hasta. Mom to pollen pollen was one of the students enrolled in the accelerated learning courses that we had changing stories run to help struggling public school students in Nepal learn how to read and do math.

My name is Renee and I’m the founder of changing stories and we exist because there are six hundred Seventeen million. Kitten youth in low-income countries around the world who can’t read or do basic math, even though most of them are already in school. We’re on a mission to change that. We’re on a mission to end the learning crisis and make sure that kids like pow on get an opportunity to learn and complete an education.

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Architecture means two different things in the way we’re going to talk about it. One is the actual work of drawing up the plans and certifying them. So a builder can build them but the other one talks about the system the system of a building the system of a culture the system of how we make decisions and I use architecture that way all the time.

I want to talk about how we ended up with the architecture we have because there’s a couple Surprising forces and those forces are actually applicable to a huge range of cultural change. I’m not a traditionalist when it comes to the built world. I think that we have made huge strides in making buildings more comfortable and more efficient and sometimes more beautiful but it is also true that there are tons of examples in every direction of Architects run amok of buildings that might have pleased someone but Don’t actually achieve their stated desired use how does this happen? If you wanted to change the built world the world we all live in the world. We can’t help but see the world of our home and our office and everything in between.

How exactly would you do it? Well, let’s start with this. There are about a hundred and ninety thousand licensed architects in the United States and every year five to ten percent of them. Quit in disgust. Retire and every year architecture schools produce five or ten thousand new graduates. So over time over 10 or 20 years, all of the Architects basically are replaced. It turns out that architecture school is a really highly leveraged place to change the way Architects think and the way Architects think changes what gets built.

So what kind of person Wants to be a teacher a professor a lecturer at an architecture school. My guess is that person likes progress in architecture. They don’t just want to teach how architecture worked in the 1800 s where the 1900 s next. Let’s think of who are the most famous architects who drives someone to become an architect while in law for a really long time was clearly Perry Mason.

Perry Mason was the archetype for the young man who wanted to become a lawyer a trial lawyer who would defend only the innocent and always win but in architecture, you’ve got Frank Lloyd Wright. You’ve got Howard Roark from The Fountainhead. You’ve got Michael Graves from the teapot. There is the Late zaha Hadid with her flowing sensuous architecture. And there is Frank gehry who used technology to build buildings that Ripple all of them are known for challenging convention. All of them are heroes because they make it worth being an architect because you can put your stamp on something we know who made this building but it’s worth noting that with the exception of Michael Graves all of these. Context are also known for being not particularly easy to work with and for creating buildings that aren’t optimized for other performance metrics like efficiency or Comfort. Famously Frank Lloyd Wright House has leaked and are hard to live in so we have this model of the heroic architect. Let’s add to it the fact that Architects don’t get paid very much if you make $90,000 a year as a A trained architect with an advanced degree. You’re in the top 10% of all Architects that doesn’t compare to lawyers or doctors how to Architects get compensated often on a percentage of how much the building cost to make. So there is an incentive to build bigger buildings more expensive buildings and also an incentive to be known. How do you get known you get known by entering competitions? You get known by building stunning buildings and so a cycle was put in place a cycle that began with Frank Lloyd Wright and continues to this day, which is that the way to be a great architect is to be a different architect and new architect and architect who isn’t building a version of the old building and then there is the clients of Architects clients of Architects. Sometimes want to just get the whole thing over with and get back to business. We’ll talk about that in a second, but then there are clients who want to put a stamp on what they are building and so it’s easier to make a big splash. If you have a famous architect building you a famous building but many of the big buildings and this is a different way that architecture has changed are designed to be big buildings. So that the person who owns the office building can make a lot of money.

What is that person’s incentive? They want to building that is efficient so that they can run it at low. Cost over time and they want to building that is easy to rent because empty spaces just cost money. They don’t make money. So there is no accident around the fact that most of the buildings you see that have been built in the last decade are mostly glass on the outside and delightfully are more energy efficient.

Why why glass on the outside because glass on the outside is the cheapest way to build a big building? NG and it turns out because it’s the style because people like us work in buildings like this, it’s also the easiest to rent and so a ratchet occurred a ratchet toward more and more efficient buildings certified LED, perhaps pronounced lead and these leed-certified buildings platinum or whatever give clients and Architects away to compete with each other on an easily understood metric each of these foundational principles of Should Compound on one another teachers teach a certain point of view a way of approaching architecture examples get built that reinforce that giving teachers more ways to teach architects who get their interesting buildings built are seen as a success they’re able to publish their work. They’re able to earn status and esteem from their peers which gets them more status and his team from clients.

And so it repeats forward and forward. Imagine what would have And instead if after Frank Lloyd Wright the academic Community the people who determined what was going to get taught decided that what they wanted to teach was utility that what they wanted to teach was efficiency Elegance the Delight of the people who are in the building the efficiency of building and maintaining the building the longevity of the building that if they had taught all of those things, which I’m not arguing for I’m just pointing it out just a hundred. Thousand people 3,000 people could have changed the entire built world around us because that was one of the key levers of how we ended up with the buildings we ended up with but I want to talk about a second one that goes in the opposite direction some of you as you heard. This could have been thinking about mcmansions make mansions are an Abomination against design and style and elegance and history and comfort. Bert and utility and efficiency all in one.

How did we end up with this? How did we end up with these horrible buildings that were built by people who had plenty of money but apparently willfully ignoring taste. Well the mcmansion held blog which is in the show notes goes into great detail about this, but here’s the essence of it. The number 3 TV Network on Cable bigger than CNN is HGTV and the people behind HGTV are proud of the fact that each show reminds you of the other that it is difficult. They say that when you’ve got people addicted to stuff to keep making shows that are basically repeats of each other.

but still don’t bore people and the essence of these shows is this that it is possible for untrained people without a lot of money to go into a house make changes to the inside of the house and do it in a way that causes the value of the house to go up dramatically so dramatically that you can sell it at a significant profit and because your investment is To buy a mortgage that profit is Multiplied and then you can do it again.

This lined up with a boom among people who were middle class or upper middle class who had money to spend on real estate and they were thinking about the money. They were spending on real estate as an investment. Not a home to live in combine these things along with the fact that the United States has plenty of land and that the Suburban vacation said a word that the growth of the suburbs was relentless during the He’s the 2000s and the last decade it meant that a lot of new construction is going on new construction. New home construction isn’t driven by Architects.

It’s driven by Builders who only make a profit if they sell a house. It’s driven by the people who are busy specking these expensive houses. Now, let’s compare what I just said to the history of Levittown after World War II a whole bunch of families were below. Being formed and potato fields in Long Island were being plowed over to build the cheapest fastest houses that they could these houses.

Sometimes known collectively as Levittown houses were cookie cutter houses because the people who were buying them were looking for a way to conform as long as he gave them an entry into the path toward the American dream. This isn’t going to change architecture because the people who were buying these houses were not seen as style makers. Or profit makers but HGTV changes this Model 50 years later when they’re talking about getting a custom house built or perhaps flip Kate Wagner of mcmansion Hell points out what happens next what happens next is the Builder eager to build another building listens to the client the client who has listened to HGTV designs the building from the inside.

I doubt cathedral ceilings in the bathroom, please a slightly bigger kitchen. I like this kind of window and I like that kind of window and I need to be able to see this from there. And of course, please chop down all the trees as you prepare my lat. What ends up happening is the architect the one who didn’t become a starchitect the architect who is simply looking to make a living in a very competitive grueling profession takes all of that stuff that’s inside the building and as to add it up to make a building that can actually be built on a budget because there is always a budget when we’re building something the end result our buildings it look ridiculous from the outside pillars were there shouldn’t be pillars cornices where there shouldn’t be cornices a roof line that makes no sense windows that don’t match one element after another that doesn’t work compounded by the fact that because there’s a budget the Those that are used are the cheapest available in every corner of the building because it’s built to flip not built to live in it was built to live in people would have done it more organically. They would have thought about what exactly they needed and built something that they could love for years at a time.

So yeah architecture matters, but when we think about the architecture of architecture, it’s interesting to think about who it’s for. And what’s it for the work? The architect is doing is it to please the professor? She had a few years ago. Is it to please the partner who hired her is it to please her colleagues and the person who’s hiring the architect. Are they looking for that building to get written up? Are they looking to get bragged about are they concerned about 10 or 20 or 30 years later what it’s going to be like to walk through that Plaza in February.

Or if the architect isn’t the driver of the situation who exactly is the Builder working for and when the Builder is working for the resident the client the person who spec’ing the building does that person have a clue about what they actually want for the long haul or are they simply following the instructions of a TV show that’s supposed to be sort of fictional that it’s supposed to be entertaining not.

And so when we think about the world we live in not just the built world, but who’s making the next software that we’re going to use who’s designing the next restaurant menu? We’re going to eat from over and over again the architecture of the system the who’s it for the what’s it for the intentional action the rewards of the people playing in the system.

Those are the ones that are driving our experience with the end product. act so yeah, if you wanted to change the entire built world, it would help to persuade 500 Pioneers in the education of Architects to like one thing over another and if you want to come at it a different way in the direction of money and customers it would be really useful to build a TV network that only reaches the smallest viable audience the most popular shows on HGTV only get seen by 4 million people the typical A million and a half but those million and a half people the ones who are spending a lot of time and energy watching these shows.

They are being taught something and you only need 10,000 of those people to go out and buy a custom house to create the convention of the mcmansion because once it is a convention people like us we live in places like this house owners Like Us sell houses like this 10,000 people. Is enough to create an entire genre the smallest viable audience is always about this.

We can never persuade 300 million or 3 billion or 7 billion people to do something. But what we can do is look at the architecture of the system figure out who the highly leveraged people are in that system and give them a series of incentives and a way of doing their work that spreads Thanks for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

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I have one quick story and one question about car names.

I learned the French carmaker Pujols chose at the beginning a naming convention for their models with Zero in the middle like the 302 it was because the zero was originally the hole for the manual crank and then it was before the electric starter literally kick-started automobile industry. So yes, I agree car names were mostly an engineering decision.

And my question is in Europe. I see a non-trivial amount of people having an Apple logo sticker on the back of their car. Usually you normal basic car. I interpret this as I need a car. Our I don’t exactly know how great car should be. But I aspire to project something better from a marketing point of view. How do you see this Behavior?

Thanks. Bye.

Thank you Jonas. I remember having an Apple logo on my car in 1984 and fast forward. I remember 20 years ago going to a conference where for the first time I saw someone having stickers all over their laptop. Maybe there was even more. On fur brand of car. So what’s this all about? What’s the purpose of the sticker?

Well in the case of the car companies putting their quote sticker on the back of the car.

You just bought is a way of them identifying you as someone who has the latest model. We’re not the latest model as someone who has one level of status or not as someone who belongs to One Tribe or another the Ford people still argue. With the Chevy people the internal combustion people are arguing with the electric people.

We send a message when we drive our car around and the audacious thing that Apple did in 1984 in addition to shipping the Mac is that it shipped with a sticker where to put the sticker well putting the sticker on your car said Don’t Judge Me by my Transportation Judge Me by the digital tool. I am choosing to use Apple’s unstated motto for years and years is we help people develop good taste about digital interaction.

That was their mission. That’s the change they made in the world. And if you had good taste in wished other people would also get the good taste thing. Well, there it is the sticker on your car. I’m an Insider people who get the joke know why I have this on my car people who don’t ignore it. It’s a way of labeling. It’s a signal and then as the laptop became something that wasn’t perfect and precious but sort of disposable as it became something we used in public the stickers on the laptop went in the other direction. They said well, yeah, I have to have a laptop. It is my portal into the world. But here Judge Me by these other things these stickers. I’m choosing to put on this modern-day automobile because we are busy judging people.

Them into groups putting them into categories who’s in who’s out who’s with us who’s against us? We’ve been doing that for a really long time and now it’s come down to a sticker that you can get for a penny.

Hello sir.

This Lewis from Los Angeles. I just finished watching your spinnackern in Prodigy and online games videos that you post it on your website.

Thank you very much for that. I never knew you were such a creator of content that myself and people of my age. I’m in my early 50s grew up with and if participated as a consumer in enjoying and experiencing from the work of many people like yourself. I also watched Halt and Catch Fire and watching your videos. She reminded me of that show one of my favorite TV series on Netflix and wondering if you’ve watched it. I do want to watch it again and it goes through the similar timeline of sounds like from your personal experience my questions. What lessons would you would have Listen take away from a show like that a very entertaining and designed for audience engagement. But what can we learn from that I learned a lot from you and I look for Content elsewhere similar to what you provide and offer what I see what your perspective. Thanks for all you do and thank you for taking my question.

Thanks for this. I’m glad that my videos resonated with you. I’m not much of a TV person. So I haven’t watched that show, but I am thrilled to say that in the show Silicon Valley they even Mentioned yoyodyne. So I guess my legacy is assured. Here’s the thing most of the inputs that we get in our lives do not come from people who are building something or who have built something.

They come from critics Meda critics critics of critics. They come from people talking about how they are engaging with the things that someone else built. So the stories of Builders all the way back to soul of a new machine by Tracy Kidder where his other book, House, these books these stories these shows in which we hear about what it’s like in the moment to deal with constraints to make choices to act as if to be an imposter inventing a future that you haven’t lived in yet.

I find these wildly inspiring. I like the ones that don’t work. I like the ones that do because we learn a lot about what it means to be inside of it. I’m reading an elodea a great book by George. Dyson largely about his dad Freeman Dyson Freeman Dyson left for five years from one of the greatest jobs in the world that Princeton to work on ready for this a rocket ship powered by nuclear weapons.

Now, I’m sure there were people on the project to thought it was the greatest idea they ever heard it’s entirely possible that one day. We will figure out how to do it without blowing up the planet, but for those five years the building working on Being inside of it making the choices. It’s thrilling.

I recommend it to everyone if you get a chance to build something to be really in it to be consumed by the thing you were building. It makes you feel alive in a different way. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution, or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information. Distribution I mean this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all NBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, When you got a face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you.

When are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide you got to show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple.

It sounds very commonsensical. But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an Mint and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories.

I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

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==> -on-monarchists- <==

There are two signs at the front of the school bus that always made a lot of sense to me. The first one is don’t stand in front of the white line. And the second one is don’t talk to the driver. And the reason they make a lot of sense is if I get on a bus, I want the driver to be in charge. I want the bus to go where the bus said it was going to go and I want the decisions to be made by someone who isn’t me?

Hey, it’s Seth and this is Akimbo will be back in a second to talk about monarchists, but first here is a message from our sponsor.

Creative isn’t who you are.

It’s what you do along the way creativity has gotten a mystical rap as if it’s some sort of gift.

And make a difference with their creative work. I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com. Go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a ruckus. Yes, we’re here to talk about royalty royalty in many forms. Not just the royalty in England or the royalty in any country but the royalty and an organization or a corporation few years ago the great Marshall sahlins were in the most important anthropologists of my lifetime along with the dearly departed David graeber author of debt collaborated on a book called on King’s it’s dense. It’s slow going it’s long and it’s all About the origins and the weirdness of monarchy because thousands and thousands of years ago walking around in the jungle in the desert in the plains in the savannah people came to understand that things might be more efficient or effective if they had a leader that having a leader an organization might make people’s lives better and that began a long cycle of Kings. These Kings often come from away.

He think he is. I know King walking fell for you. You don’t vote for Kings. Well, I can become king then the Lady of the Lake arm clad in the purest shimmering samite held Aloft Excalibur from the bosom of the water signifying by Divine Providence that I Arthur was to carry Excalibur.

That is why I am your king and by that, I mean they are not You and me, they don’t have to follow the cultural rules. Maybe they come from Far Away in a geographic sense a plunderer someone who came from another place, or maybe they come from God. But either way the king is not one of us. That is why the king is allowed to rule and like that bus driver.

The Kings word is absolute because the king does not have to play by our rules and if you do the math You can see that a monarch cannot possibly rule unless there are monarchists that monarchists people who like the fact that there is a king that there is someone in charge are an essential part of creating a monarchy.

There are monarchists in every country. There are monarchists in many organizations because the Monarch lets us off the hook because the Monarch makes the decisions and a constitutional monarchy the monarchy who is operating with the best interests of the people at heart and consistently and persistently makes long-term decisions that payoff that’s a really effective form of government the problems spring up when the Monarch coming from away not playing by the rules not being part of the culture having absolute power when that Monarch decides to do things that are selfish or short-sighted or or aren’t in the interest of the people the Monarch is therefore and the history of monarchy in governments. And I would argue in organizations is littered with a predictable string of failures to come for what happens when the Monarch loses the thread but then there’s a second Challenge and the Second Challenge is that if you’re letting the driver Drive everybody else on the bus is just a passenger and so when Industrial Came along a hundred and twenty years ago.

We had to figure out how to organize the factory and we organize it in many ways like a nation-state with someone in charge a ruler and owner. Someone who doesn’t have to play by the rules who can park their car wherever they want to who can come in when they want and leave when they want someone who has their own air force their own Army and their own agenda if you want to work there you can work there, but you’re not in charge the person in charge is in charge. Judge, and so they put Jack Welch on the cover of every business magazine every month forever because it appeared that this monarchy approach to ruling a company could really pay off when Jack left GE. He took 417 million dollars of shareholder cash with him as a prize for leaving behind his kingdom Henry Ford Thomas Edison, you get the idea when we have an organization Industrial Patient that’s run by a powerful founder or operator voice. It allows the people who work there to know exactly what they are supposed to do.

They’re just doing their job. There are Cog in the system. They’re doing what they’re told. Don’t blame me. The king told me to do it and over time this degrades us over time this lack of dignity from not making a decision whether it is a decision as a citizen or a worker ends up undermining our independence our ability to lead and most of all if you care about systems, it undermines our resilience because things work as long as they’re working, but when the world changes the question is who will sense that it is changing who will speak up when the world changes. The question is who will take the lead on that new element that when we have an opportunity.

To adjust to change the shift is the monarch capable interested motivated to do that or do they like it the way it is right now President Harry S. Truman famously had on his desk a sign that said the buck stops here. That signed did not mean I am in charge go away. It meant I am responsible and that is the difference. It’s between having a monarch and having people who show up to take ownership of the work that they do a path that’s open to everybody.

And so as we think about how we want to change the culture as we think about a new generation of leadership that’s focused on things like dignity and fairness and equity and inclusion. How are we going to square that with the idea that some of us are monarchists. So when I’m on a bus, it’s true. I’mi’m Darkest but when I’m working with an organization when I’m a customer when I’m a citizen, I would prefer to be dealing with a more flexible anti monopolist organization one that understands it tomorrow isn’t going to be just like today one that realizes that all of us are smarter than any of us that we have learned a lot in the last hundred years. And one of the things we’ve learned is that the world keeps changing and the other A thing we’ve learned is that in the long run? It’s always the long run that in the long run the urgency or emergency of the next 10 minutes is dwarfed by our need to build structures and systems and processes that allow people to be seen to be heard and most of all to lead because if each of us takes responsibility as opposed to handing it off to the king that just walked in the door, it’s harder it’s scarier, but it is Completely what it means to be a contribution to see possibility and to be alive.

Thanks for listening to my rant. Let’s hear from Monty Python, and we’ll see you next time supremum executive power derives from a mandate from the masses not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back in a second with questions from previous episodes, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Thanks.

It’s Maria. Hey Seth. My name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – who’s on the phone?

Hi, this is Caitlin. Hi, sir.

Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth.

My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi, this is Russell news from Greece.

Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I really love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode. I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki and Bo link2006. Click the appropriate button while you’re there. You can check out the show notes.

Hello Seth, this is Robbie from London. I’m about to start a podcast just for fun. And you know, if it makes anything great.

If not, it’ll be a great fun experience.

I know so our services online where you can hire virtual assistants aboard where they can leave a review for your podcast get more traffic to your podcast more download subscribers. And I’m questioning whether that is right or wrong whether that could affect my podcast business in the future. If it got off the ground, I know on Amazon if there’s fake reviews, I’m highly suspicious of that product. So I’m always looking for Real reviews online. So when it comes to paying to get more traffic toward my podcast, is that a bad thing or is that just being Savvy?

Thank And I appreciate all the effort you do.

Thank you for this honest question Robbie and I hear you. It is super tempting when shortcuts present themselves particularly when they look like obligations to embrace them and it leads to a corruption a corruption in the standards that we thought mattered and a corruption in our own personal morals, but it’s really interesting because once the shortcut becomes a standard it stops being a Corruption and it starts being an established cost of doing business SEO in the old days the idea of building a website. So that search engines would be more likely to index. It was a hack. It was a shortcut. It was something you weren’t supposed to spend money on you were supposed to Simply build something that was good enough and now every single major entity spends a lot of money on SEO because it is considered part of what you have to do.

When the New York Times bestseller list began to get gamed when people would show up in an author’s doorstep and say for $50,000. I will guarantee you a slot on the bestseller list. It was clearly wrong. It was wrong because the bestseller list served several purposes some economic some cultural and undermining it by buying a slot in it is clearly not what it’s about and yet many people did it I have Never done it I never will do it but it is for many categories now a cost of doing business.

And so we get to your question which is the podcast thing. Well first I think we can have useful argument on the merits about whether lots and lots of fake reviews actually help the business of your podcast. I would argue that they don’t I’ve told this story before but years ago a friend was sad and I said to her what’s up. She said well, I have to go negative. I-i’ve I said, what does that mean? You have to go negative. She said well, I made a rule for myself, which is I can’t follow more people on Instagram than follow me.

And there are people I want to follow now, but I don’t have enough followers to do it, which means I’m gonna have to go into deficit. Well, I thought this was fairly amusing. So for her birthday, I bought her fifteen or twenty thousand followers on Instagram cost me about $149 no harm. No foul. No one was injured. It didn’t change. Anything but it made her very happy.

Well, it’s pretty clear that there’s lots of fake followers on Instagram and Twitter and it’s also pretty clear that people with fake followers don’t generally build a long-term resilient future for themselves. So I would argue in the case of the podcast where it is not yet a cost of doing business to go by yourself fake reviews.

Don’t worry about it. Don’t read the reviews don’t count the reviews. the way to build the podcast that works is to build a podcast to 10 people who listen to it will happily tell ten more people about because you can get 10 people 10 friends 10 colleagues to listen to your first episode and if they tell the others then the word spreads repeat that 30 weeks in a row, and now you have a hit Hey Seth, Richard here in Hong Kong.

I recently listened to a podcast which he did with Tim Ferriss and you guys talked about attitude as a skill one skill in particular named resilience resilience developing resilience. It’s a kind of a double-edged sword because it’s such an important skill to get but you only get it through tough scenarios, so I believe Brazilian Tony comes as a product of having challenges and facing adversity.

Is there another way to Cochin resilience real resilience? Not the type of resilience you get from case study Theory or from coaching and mentorship, but real resilience.

Love to hear what you had to say.

Thanks for everything.

Have a great 2021.

Thanks for this question Richard.

I think that there are two kinds of resilience that were both talking about here. There is the resilience of structure the resilience of the world isn’t going to turn out the way you expect are you anti fragile? Do you have a portfolio? Is there a way forward when your dreams do not come true and then there is the resilience of emotional intelligence. How do we internally process something that didn’t work?

I think it’s worth treating them separately the first kind of resilience. This is the resilience of somebody who learns from a young age. Don’t bet everything on 32 red on the roulette wheel because you’re going to get out of the game and staying in the game is the only way you get to keep playing the game and I think we can learn this without trauma.

I think we can learn this for example with board games with lots of games that we can play as kids because it Oops us understand that strategy is not the same as tactics. It helps us understand that if the dice comes up in a way, we didn’t expect it’s not personal that the kid who cries and throws the board when they lose it Parcheesi needs to learn something about how external forces work external forces don’t care about you and they don’t know about you and this idea of modeling various game theories.

And of course game theory has nothing to do with board games. Various theories about how the world will unfold makes it much more likely we can be unemotional about how the world is going to be that that is one form of resilience. But I think you’re right. The second part is that growing up part of what it means to grow up. Even if you’re 40 years old is to fall down scrape your knee and get up and do it again.

If you’ve done a good job on the first part when you fall down and scrape your knee you will. The power to get up and do it again. It’s not fatal. But then you need the emotional Reserve to be able to say to yourself. Yep that happened that happened again. Here we go, because one of the problems of isolating our kids of isolating young adults of creating a system that’s based on just getting an a getting the right answer and moving to the next level is that sometimes it doesn’t work out the way we expect.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

When are you going to face those fears? I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason why Why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information.

We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -please-dont-litter- <==

Getting on the subject of beautification is like picking up a tangled skein of wool. All the threads are interwoven Recreation and pollution and mental health and the crime rate and Rapid Transit and Highway beautification and the war on poverty and Parks national state and local. It is hard to Hitch the conversation into one straight line because everything leads to something else.

That’s Lady Bird Johnson talking about littering. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo in a minute. We’ll be back to talk about litter and more important littering. But first here’s a message from our sponsor.

It’s app and this is a podcast. It’s a podcast produced by Alex De Palma. Alex is a bit of a podcast Whisperer. Alex and I are inviting you to join us in the podcasting Workshop. You can find out more at podcast Club dot link and this is Alex De Palma Seth’s co-teacher and producer in this class.

You’ll learn not just the technology to make a podcast because honestly, it’s pretty easy. You’ll learn to find Your voice you’ll learn to find the others and together in this proven Workshop that’s back again. You’ll discover that you can make a podcast not to make money because unfortunately you probably won’t but to make a difference to be heard and to find the people who want to hear from you, which is even more important podcast Club dot link.

We’d love to have you join us. Thanks.

Litter has been around for as long as mankind archaeologists actually specialize in finding litter other than Graves all they’ve got to work with is piles of trash stuff that’s left behind. One of the earliest examples of an anti-littering campaign. Ironically is a piece of litter from rural Greece thousands of years old a sign that says, As if you get caught littering you have to pay a fine of 51 drachmas to whoever finds you littering.

Of course, we know this because the sign wasn’t in a museum was lying by the side of the road. So litter has been around for a really long time Sibley and Lou researched the difference between active and passive litter active litter is intentionally throwing something out the window of your moving car or tossing a Read by the side of the road active littering is something that we can do quite selfishly because we know we are moving on if we look at the mess left behind by nomadic peoples. It’s easy to understand how this could have happened. It’s not their problem anymore passive litter on the other hand is litter where you are in place and then you discard something something that you can live with something that isn’t that unsightly and then when you leave you forget that you did it.

Turns out it’s much easier to change the behavior of active litterers that it is to change passive littering because passive littering is based on forgetfulness or on the idea of diffusion of responsibility. There’s a lot of people around I don’t know exactly how that piece of garbage got there. I need to go now while littering is sort of interesting. It’s litterbugs that I’m really fascinated about. Where did we come up with this idea of litterbugs?

And starting each. Let me get that human beings need to be pushed.

And cajoled into not littering anymore. Heather Rogers has written a book about the history of garbage and one of the things she dug up. That’s absolutely extraordinary. Is that the keep America beautiful campaign the entire idea of shaming litterbugs the word litterbug was invented in the 1940s as a response to localities beginning to regulate people.

Going out styrofoam cups Pepsi bottles and other mass-produced objects of consumption and it turns out that keep America beautiful which we will talk about again in a minute a non-profit. The one that runs all of those ads was founded and is still led by people from industry specifically the American Can Company owens-illinois glass company Coca-Cola Pepsi the Dixie cup company the leader. Is of these companies embraced an idea that has caught on more and more and it goes like this the creators of industrial output only exist to serve the needs of the public and the public is responsible. They’re responsible for what they demand and they are responsible for how they deal with it. So if Pepsi start selling 2 liter Pepsi at a lower price, it’s because more and more people want to buy lots and Two Pepsi at a low price and if people become obese or get diabetes Well that is their choice. It is up to them the fact that an industrialist enabled it not their responsibility.

So if we go back to this idea of littering if you are in the business of making cans and cups and Bottles, if you are in the business of figuring out how to get people to switch from water that comes from a tap to water that comes in a bottle. You have a financial incentive to keep that system going that you are short-term compensation is completely based on what happens tomorrow not what happens 10,000 years from now when that bottle still exists in a landfill and so in self-defense the industry created the idea of the litterbug basically saying to the public it’s your responsibility.

Our responsibility to figure out how to recycle your responsibility to figure out how to not throw it out the window. I think it probably peaked in 1971 1971 was after Lady Bird Johnson’s rain is the most activist first lady in history up to that moment with the beautification of Highways with the shaming of litterbugs with a movement to say to people who littered you are not one of us. We need to make this problem go Go away. Well in 1971 they ran and add one of the 50 greatest ads of all time. According to the Ad Council and add that one to Clio Awards.

It’s called The Crying Indian and in this commercial the star is paddling a canoe not very well. I just watched the commercial again down a river surrounded by trash surrounded by junk and at the key moment of the commercial a narrator comes on so.

People have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country and some people don’t people start pollution. People can stop it.

I’m sure you can visualize what happened as he stands there a car drives by and throws a big bag of fast food out the window right to his feet. Well, the irony runs deep first, of course that the commercial was paid for by companies that made a profit making single use containers that very kind that are getting thrown out of the car.

But secondly that the star of that commercial who many people knew as iron Eyes Cody. One of the most famous Indian / Native Americans in the movies up until that time was actually from Louisiana a second-generation Italian immigrant named Oscar Decor T. And yes, he wasn’t a native American now Cody / cordys intent was probably very good. He spent his entire career helping Native American communities level up and see themselves differently in the world, but the subterfuge here runs really deep because this mindset that says people who create our culture and people who create the means and mechanisms of Industry are not responsible doesn’t hold water because if a human being is responsible for whether or not they throw something out of the car window, aren’t they also responsible for whether or not they make the thing that got thrown out of the car window.

There’s a Milton Edmund Terror mindset that says that the only job of a corporation is to make as much money as they can for its shareholders, but that forgets the time element that the companies that are based on creating stuff that we can no longer discard aren’t going to make enough money for their shareholders going forward.

And so now the culture the culture is starting to take a hard look and say wait a minute we wouldn’t have to recycle this stuff if you didn’t make it and sell it at an attractive. Price maybe what marketers are doing? Some marketers short-term marketers is using the culture to persuade people more and more people to buy stuff. They’re going to have to throw out to buy water in a bottle instead of drinking water from a glass.

Now at the very same time. There are people showing up with new entities. Some of them are more ethical and more environmentally sound probably healthier, but many of them are simply green washed. And greenwashing is another cynical marketing trick and what it says is there are people people who are nervous about their footprint people who are nervous about their health if we take some of that nervousness and turn it into a story turn it into a shroud for what we make plug it into the idea that we have trained the world that the best way to solve an emotional problem is by buying something.

Maybe we can sell them something else. And so a commercial a beautification project a plot of wildflowers. These are things that can make us feel better. But what we know is that systemic change changing the mindset of not just the active but the passive litterer is truly difficult. We’ve discovered that yes, we can decrease the amount of active littering by shaming the liver but we also know and it’s so easy to demonstrate that Changing the temptation to litter in the first place by not giving people what they say they want but instead giving them what they need products and services that are more resilient that stand the test of time that might be the responsibility of the industrialist not simply up to each of us.

Thanks for listening to my rant. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with a clarification and A couple questions from previous episodes but first here is a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp an independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at akimbo are up to visit. Akimbo.com go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks.

It’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump scale entire sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Sylvania hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey sup. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece.

Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as you know, I do love to hear from you.

If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode. I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button before I get to your questions first this clarification.

Is that in your recent episode on the architecture of architecture?

You challenged us your audience to create outside value by targeting architecture professors as kind of benevolent levers on the built environment. And as one of those myself I was flattered but you also blame mcmansions on the profession of architect and I want to push back on that a little bit fully one. Third of atmospheric carbon comes from buildings and we Architects deserve much of the blame for that probably.

Architects design all those Jive plastic shopping centers and office Parks it in Suburban parking lots. So we’ll shoulder some of the blame for that too. But while states require pretty much all non houses to have an architect less than 2% of single-family residences are actually designed by Architects and of that tiny sliver of architect design houses almost none of them are mcmansions the difference between an architect and a house designer.

It’s kind of like the difference between in the astronomer and astrologer licensed Architects have to go to college for at least five years. We typically work five years in a forum for where eligible for licensure and we have to pass 6 exams Each of which has a 58 percent pass rate on average and by contrast there’s no schooling training or licensure required to be a house designer.

All right. Thanks.

Thank you for this Michael and for the correspondence that led to it. I’m really impressed by your leadership as well as your bubble wrap house. Ja link to in the show notes, you are absolutely correct. I did not know this almost no houses in the United States are actually on the spot designed by architects.

In fact Builders and house designers are culpable for mcmansions and disastrous houses. I will say that they look to Architects for Spiritual and intellectual leadership and that it’s important that we hold. All of these folks accountable because you’re right the carbon footprint that we build once we build a house is something we pay for for decades afterwards.

Thanks for calling in with this.

Hey Seth, it’s Adam from Toronto. Thanks so much for last week’s episode on the architecture of architecture. I’m an architecture student myself. And I believe the transforming the architecture field is going to be an essential part of solving the climate and biodiversity crisis. I’m on a mission to make that transformation happen.

I’ve just started a co-op job with an amazing not-for-profit studio that shares my vision their approach focuses on creating speculative work that aims to change perceptions of what is possible in the field something I’ve noticed. Destroying their team is that they place a huge emphasis on creating Innovative projects, but they seem to see marketing is a pretty low priority since their whole reason for being centers on solving Global environmental problems.

I feel there’s an opportunity to radically improve their effectiveness by helping them see that there is much an idea as marketing organization as a design studio. I think Concepts like the minimum viable audience storytelling and try building should be baked into everything this studio does after all Thing problems on a global scale is impossible. If you can convince others to join you when I heard your proposed strategy for creating change in the architecture field by focusing on the high leverage point of architecture professors.

I realized that I’m in a perfect environment to try it out. My challenge is this as the newest and least professionally experienced member of the team, how do I begin to convince the rest of the studio that marketing needs to be Central to all of their major conversations and in terms of current marketing efforts How do I teach the studio that strategies like writing blog posts to appeal to everyone probably isn’t going to help them achieve their goals.

Thanks for everything.

You bring to the world. Thank you for this atom. One of the things I believe that nonprofits in particular but many organizations should do is eagerly publish that if you seek to change your industry publishing is really what you do for years and years. I’ve worked With Acumen a groundbreaking nonprofit that pioneered patient capital and what I helped them see is that they’re not going to change the entire world of the bottom of the pyramid the two billion people who struggle on three to ten dollars a day, but if they publish their work if they share their successes and their failures if they show people the roadmap then others will follow will copy it will scale and that’s exactly what is happening. Happened and the same thing can be true for someone who’s trying to Pioneer in architecture.

If we think about the important architects who have changed the way people think largely they’ve done it by publishing their work as much as they’ve done it by building their work that unbuilt buildings widely shared can change the conversation. And so this isn’t about content Marketing in the sense that you’re hustling people to click on something.

So that they will buy from you. This is simply about changing the conversation by putting your ideas into the world warts and all they set this is Casey from Minneapolis hate during every episode you run a spot for the alt MBA and it is jaw-droppingly.

Awesome. I’ve heard of 90 times and I still let it play every single time because it’s a so well crafted the guy speaking the you cannot think the internet guy is voice is pure gold. His delivery is Flawless and the copy is a plus love to know more about the spot a who is this person it? How did you find him?

Did he write The Copy? Did you read the copy was the copy your first stab or whether other versions that you actually shipped and you’ve tweeted along the way love to know more and I know others would too about the making of This alt and be a spot.

Thank you for this and it’s a long overdue chance for me to thank my Friend TK Coleman, you’re right a hundred and twenty or more times. TK has been on the end of this podcast as he is today talking about his experience in the alt MBA TK is a leader a scholar speaker. He’s a really good guy as well. So the origin of that at first of all why has it been on so many times?

Well, the answer is that frequency works the answer is that persistent and consistent and Has frequency showing up regularly not replacing it when I’m tired of it, but replacing it when it is no longer valuable, and it’s still valuable because what he had to say about the alt MBA is true, and it also helps us understand The Human Condition Jesse. Dylan is a groundbreaking documentary filmmaker.

I asked Jesse years ago to bring his crew to New York from California to film people at an alumni event talking about Experience in the alt MBA thanks to Jesse and his crew. They created a safe space where people could come look straight into the camera and talk about their experience. So he set the table but there was no copywriter. There was no script and I didn’t edit it at all that instead. What we did was create a place where people could speak on their behalf. Not just on hours about how they saw the world. And so what you’re hearing are TK’s words not mine. I am flattered that you think I wrote that I didn’t and part of it comes from practice the practice of showing up to say I have a thought to share and it turns out we can all get better at that and we get better at that when we publish our work.

Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right.

Is it puts you.

You in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason.

Why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories.

I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt nba.com.

==> -on-direct-advertising- <==

I have no idea. If or when you are listening to this if I was selling something if I had to pay to put this in front of you that’s a real challenge because direct marketing is the idea that you pay your money, but you don’t take your chances because you know exactly when someone turns around and pays you.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

In March, 20 20. I did a zoom call with my team about how we were going to spend time and money promoting and advertising the akimbo workshops. I decided it would be fun to record that 15 minute rant that started our conversation. And so here it is. We’ll be back in a second with more about how Google is walking away from direct advertising but first Here’s an unmeasurable untrackable ad from our sponsor.

It’s back. The real skills conference is back and actual conference. You don’t have to get on a plane, but you do need to interact face-to-face online from wherever you are two hours of interaction on your toes with real people talking about the things that matter the skills that help us make a difference. Akimbo is back running it again to find out more visit akimbo.com go for all the details the people Meet will change your life.

Okay. Hi all I’m recording this just letting you know I’ll turn off the recording or edit things out later. So here’s where the begins in 1998 when Yahoo bought my company, which was a direct marketing company the company that invented direct marketing on the internet my new boss sat me down and he said so what’s direct marketing and that’s how I knew I was in trouble.

So what is direct marketing direct marketing is action marketing named by Lester wunderman direct marketing is measured and it is about an engagement. With directly between the person who bought the ad and the person who saw the ad you can measure it and you can profit from it Lester was the pioneer of direct marketing. He helped invent it he invented the Columbia record club and save the American Express card and the idea of direct marketing, which we’re going to start calling something else in a minute.

Is that because you can measure it and because it translates into Revenue you can do an infinite amount of it. Lee fast because if you spend a dollar to interrupt somebody and you make two dollars now you can do it again, so it shouldn’t be called direct our canoes to be called direct advertising because marketing around here means something else marketing is the change we make in the world by telling true stories and helping people get where they want to go.

Advertising is spending money appropriately to bring a message to someone who hadn’t heard it before or who needs to hear it again, so they take Some sort of action or change their mind about something. Now, what does this have to do with the fork in the road for a Kimbo?

Google had a breakthrough by accident it wasn’t part of their business plan, which was that for a nickel you could buy a click and they would measure and make it easy for you to see how that nickel paid off. So what happened was people started buying keywords on Google for lots and lots of products and services for Nicola click.

And then because marketers are narcissists people started Googling themselves, when they Google themselves, they saw that someone was buying their keyword for a nickel. So if your Home Depot and you see that Lowe’s is buying your keyword for nickel this cannot stand so you started buying it for a dime and a race was on and so Google grew with zero sales force. And if anyone tells you that they were the key sales person behind Google they’re lying because Google didn’t have A key salesperson no sales calls were necessary.

All that happened was an auction took place to buy clicks which were measured for the keywords that matter to you. And that’s how Google became a huge multi multi-billion dollar company almost all of their revenue still to this day comes from that simple auction. If we do the math of the auction, there’s a challenge in the challenge is this if it’s worth $1 click for you to buy clicks and it’s worth $1 click for your competitor to buy clicks is worth a dollar because it means your profits going to be a buck for 90 cents. You should buy The Click you get to keep ten cents you’re still ahead.

But if there’s an auction all of a sudden guess who’s keeping almost every penny of value Google or Facebook because people are competing for the keyword and all the value like a plan. Word goes to the person who owns the real estate not to the company that’s buying it. Right so far so good. So I’ll making sense.

Now the thing about direct advertising is almost none of the billions of dollars that are spent every year by marketers has traditionally been earmarked for direct advertising. It’s been earmarked for brand advertising brand advertising our Billboards sponsorships magazine it tv ads radio ads because we can’t measure action.

It is not action marketing it is Unmeasured and it’s based on a completely different way of looking at the world. So when I had my first job at 23 my company spent millions and millions of dollars on advertising and we couldn’t measure any of it. Not only couldn’t you measure any of it? It took months and months maybe a year to go from I have an idea for an ad to the ad is running.

And you could only run a couple ads you couldn’t want a thousand or ten thousand different kinds of ads. It was just logistically impossible. It also didn’t make sense because frequency is so powerful frequency says that the first time someone sees an ad it has almost no impact on them. There are few people it does but almost none and so you have to run the same add 3 times 9 times J. Levinson says 27 times against one person before it. It’s this again.

So what does this all mean means a couple things first of all advertising has always been a crapshoot. It’s a crapshoot because it’s human nature and no one knows exactly what’s working that direct advertising has been a bit of a race to the bottom because you get rewarded for something that works like this.

So Flat Belly diet three words. It doesn’t have a lot of nuance to it, but enough people clicked on it that they could run the ad again. N so it’s really rare that important work gets done by direct advertisers. It’s really rare that you’re able to come up with an ad to pays for itself that you can run again and again and again that you’re proud of there are a couple exceptions right that I think if we look at how the mattress or the Shaving business has been turned upside down.

It’s been turned upside down because they had 50 million of venture capital spend, but they also figured out how to optimize for this. direct response Okay, but we need to talk about this now for two reasons. First of all, because a Kimbo doesn’t build workshops that are optimized for direct response advertising.

It’s not a late-night infomercial now one more thing you get a potato peeler and so we’re never going to have the yield that lets us by the YouTube ads or the Facebook ads or Google ads the way somebody who wants to sell you the Lamborghinis in their garage can These were not appealing to the kind of person that clicks in buys right away.

But the second thing and this is current events is that in February Google shifted gears and said, you know how we’ve been helping people track behavior for years and years misusing the cookie, which was originally invented just as the convenience to so you didn’t have to type your password in every time all this shared information about people tracking allocation of interest in attributions and all this that we’re not going to do that anymore.

Now Google is not known for being an evil. Why would Google even do this? Why would they push to undo all of the direct marketing that they have been pushing for four years? Well, the reason is this now that the landlord has taken all the money from the direct marketing auction. They are discovering that lots and lots of people who would have been advertisers like General Foods General Mills General Electric all the generals.

They can’t be direct marketers right neither can mr. Coffee. Mr. Peanut or Mrs. Butterworth. It does doesn’t work because you can’t measure how many people bought syrup because they saw an ad on the internet.

So by blowing it up now that they’ve destroyed radio and television and newspapers. They’re basically saying to the advertisers who are used to spending advertising money without knowing what’s going to work. Guess what Google lets you run advertising without knowing what’s going to work. Okay small little aside because I’m working here without notes is When I was at Yahoo, the home page of Yahoo was sold out for a year in advance. The banner on the homepage.

Now Banner on the homepage of Yahoo was the worst place to run an ad on the entire internet because you’ve got everyone instead of paying for specifics. You are paying a premium for General you’re paying a premium to reach the unwashed masses unmeasured unknown. And most of the time when Yahoo sold in had to somebody in 1999.

They didn’t want to click through data. They didn’t want to know how many people clicked on yet because if Yahoo, told them they would have to tell their boss and they would have to say to their boss. They had didn’t work that well and then they would get in trouble. So instead Yahoo! Sold the story of want to be on the homepage of the internet because we’re the internet. Our homepage is usually sold out you can have it. A million dollars and so I’m guessing a million dollars a day. They were selling a piece of real estate. That was worthless.

Except it gave you a story the story to put in a press release in the story to tell your boss, which is where the sponsor of the internet today. Everyone quick. Go looked at Yahoo! Where that’s us. So now as we grow a Kimbo as we seek to cross the chasm we have a challenge and the challenge is we’re not direct marketers, right? They’re going to renew my direct marketing Hall of Fame price right behind me. They’re going to kick us out of the direct marketing Hall of Fame because we’re not optimized as direct marketers because we’re proud of making something doesn’t sell very well by The Click.

But we also know that we want to get the word out to people who weren’t necessarily paying attention to a subtle blog post. We’re necessarily looking last week for the kind of change that we make so we need to be in the world and we are willing to have a budget to be in the world to tell our story but the conversation the challenge going forward is How do you do that when you’re not using the metrics of the internet?

Because if you just say, oh we’re going to sponsor 10,000 podcasts. How much does that cost? How do you decide is it better to sponsor 10,000 podcasts or is it better to sponsor Facebook or Google or put the money somewhere else and without measurement? It’s really hard to do and so the last part of my rant and then I’ll turn off this recorder. We can have a conversation that’s part of my rant. Is that what marketers have been doing since 1920 since scientific advertising which great book came out is come up with a proximate ways to measure some of them are expensive in which you do panels and you say to the people around the table.

Name a brand of granola and someone says over my granola. That’s my favorite kind and but most people have never heard of a my granola and then you write a whole bunch of billboards all throughout town. And then you have another panel a month later. He say name a brand of granola and some people say Vermont granola and you get a promotion because this really really poor research technique has perhaps validated that your Billboards worked.

Of course, it doesn’t tell us anything because it might be they heard about it from someone else. It might be their hearing about For my granola is totally different than buying Vermont granola and on and on and on so the short answer is we are back to the Maelstrom of nobody knows anything and we have to beware of really time-consuming and expensive processes that include 40-page brand Bibles that are not as suitable replacement for that’s a damn good add that really spoke to me.

I heard you. It was in the right place at the right time with the right message for me. And that is still a human act. It is nothing that we can measure or test for it is simply the work of a creative who said I have something to say knock knock who’s there that when Mary Wells Lawrence The Great advertising executive figured out how to double the sales of Alka-Seltzer.

She didn’t do it with research and she didn’t do it with testing. She did it by realizing that if the jingle was plop plop fizz fizz people would take two Alka-Seltzer when they got sick instead of one and it’s rare to find creative genius in advertising, but the shift that Google is making is requiring that it’s going to come back because it’s all we got.

All right turning record off.

You want to hide you ate too much. The cheesecake made you greedy was directing it and stomach hear this message from ol Speedy Alka-Seltzer. A plop plop fizz fizz. Oh, what a relief videos will be back with answers to questions from previous episodes, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo. Cam go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

It’s Maria. My name is Kyle reading sound. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump. This is Caitlin.

Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is And that completes my question.

As you know, I do love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode. I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button a couple questions to get us started talking about monarchy and democracy.

Isis This is Nico from Berlin Germany. I feel question regarding your exercise out about monarchy. I have a small family owned business and basically I’m the Monarch in our company. So whatever I think of a dream of will be done and I have this feeling that my employees are very happy with this situation in that they are used to Being in a company with a monarch who decides now I want to change this and I’m wondering if you have any ideas on how to change this culture change the expectation of my employees to not have me deciding. Everything are also challenging my decisions.

Thank you, sir.

Thanks for the sneak out.

Yes, you got the point of what I was trying to get at which is the person who signed up to work in your small organization probably signed up because they were looking for a monarch. That doesn’t mean they didn’t want to be heard doesn’t mean they don’t want dignity a chance to contribute but there’s a reason that some people start businesses and there was a reason that some people have chosen not to And when you say to the team I am not going to do X Y or Z that causes stress stress isn’t always a bad thing but stress is real and the stress has to do with how big a map are you expecting me to draw because many people have been brainwashed from young age to only want to press the button on the French fry machine to have the smallest possible map for them to draw.

Why people do things like become a nurse because within the realm of the patient nurse relationship, there’s an enormous amount of latitude for a well-respected nurse in the right working environment to make a huge difference because no they are not simply going through the manual. They are spending time being a human with other humans, but there’s a big difference between say being a nurse and being appointed head. Of the entire Healthcare operation different sized map different kind of choices to be made.

So my entire career has been focused on helping people eagerly seek a bigger map. I believe people are capable of having a lot of self-determination and that many spots in our industrialized world have stripped them from that not just the ability to do it, but their belief that they can do it, so I’m cheering you on but I’m reminding you. You that yeah, it’s stressful.

Hey Seth, it’s Russell from Colorado. Alt MBA 40. Woohoo.

My question today is about the monarchists podcast.

One of the things that I’ve noticed in my world is that I believe that humans have a very limited capacity for democracy. So while I really really really believe in democracy, there’s sometimes when it isn’t effective. So for example, we’ve all been in those staff meetings. Where the boss. Allows the group to try to decide and discuss and come to a consensus over where to put the couch or something that isn’t really necessary and everybody just gets tired and frustrated and it takes a lot of time to sort through that on the other hand. There is a lot of issues that we really do need to discuss and come to consensus to whether that’s how diverse employees are treated in the workplace or how we are going to be as a people so My question is where do we draw the line? I mean in our country we have representative democracy. So we elect representatives so that they make decisions for us but more specifically in the workplace or in our relationships. How do we decide when to engage that limited energy that we have for democracy? And when do you think it’s best just to to use your analogy? Say hey, you’re the Bus driver I’m going to defer this responsibility to you.

Thank you Russell.

It’s worth noting that democracy was a capital D. The organized voting for political decisions is different than democracy with the little D, which is the group deciding what the group is going to do, but in both cases, there is very very little actual straight up greek-style democracy in our lives it. Way more likely we defer to other people or that we speak up maybe more than we should on issues that probably don’t matter that much that people are way more likely to want to argue about a logo design.

Then they are to want to take responsibility for which city to move the office to Y. Well when it comes to the logo design Everyone’s an expert because everyone has looked at logos when it comes to taking responsibility for where everyone in the Office should move well, that’s a lot of responsibility to handle.

So my point about democracy begins with democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others. I think Winston Churchill said that but I’m not certain and what it means is that there are other ways that groups can make decisions, but they don’t usually end well and that one of the advantages of having a system in place.

It allows groups of people to speak up is that is a steam release valve that lets a system of government catch its breath and shift gears and go in the other direction with not nearly as much trauma as if we have to wait until something dramatic happens. And so I don’t believe humans have a limited ability for democracy.

I believe we have been brainwashed into a certain form of leadership. Ship adherence or management adherence to be more accurate and I also believe that there are real penalties for taking responsibility and most people don’t want to take responsibility most of the time and what we need in small groups and large are people who are going to say, this is on my watch here. I made this we’re going to own the outcome and then do something with what they learn.

This is why computers civil? Hearing electrical engineering and parts of medicine have advanced so much in the last hundred years because there’s a feedback loop there is data. It’s not just well, that’s my opinion because this is about more than opinions. It’s about what works and as we go forward figure out how to give people the benefit of the doubt the dignity to speak up the chance to lead enables us to realize that all of us are smarter than any of us and they’re what we need. Our systems that are resilient in the face of change because change is everywhere.

Thanks for listening.

Appreciate your questions. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution, or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know.

And none of us can do that better than the internet right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all NBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, When you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment. And we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories.

I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -entrepreneurs-guide-to-trademarks- <==

Here’s a non-lawyers guide for artists creators and entrepreneurs about copyright trademark and patent, but maybe I shouldn’t call it that because Entrepreneur magazine has spent millions and millions of dollars suing entrepreneurs for using the word entrepreneur. It would be a little bit like Time Magazine suing people who make clocks or who use a watch or a little bit like the Atlantic magazine suing people who live on the east coast of North or South America or even the west coast of Europe or Africa.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo be back in a second to talk. What you might need to know, but might not understand about patents trademarks and copyright, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

Sometimes it seems like if you want to start a business you need a rich uncle or a bank or VC, but that’s not true. Some of the greatest projects of all time have been bootstrapped built with a different model. The bootstrappers workshop is back from akimbo. You can find out all All the details at akimbo.com / go it’s a chance to build the project that you’ve dreamed of to find Independence to make a difference.

You can be a bootstrapper but it helps to know the best practices. I hope you’ll check it out. Akimbo.com / go back when I was a book packager. My job was to invent books and then build them along the way we ended up creating a hundred and twenty books some bestsellers most not But in order to sell a hundred and twenty bucks, we came up with more than a thousand more than a thousand book ideas. Some of which took a minute some which took six years and along the way after setting them out tens of thousands of times to hundreds of editors in the book business.

Only once exactly once did someone steal one of my ideas. Of course the idea they stole ended up selling more than a hundred million dollars. As worth of books, but even in the moment and especially now after all these years, I’m gratified that I had an idea that someone could steal and turn into a hundred million dollar business.

What should we do about our ideas? What should we do when someone steals our ideas? How should we keep people from stealing our ideas? How is it that Syracuse University ostensibly a non-profit in the public interest tries to trademark The color orange, what would it even mean to say? No other sports team is allowed to have an orange logo, even if we get the 64 color box from Crayola, there’s only 64 colors in it.

Where do we going to do to start trademarking move? It’s going to be a challenge. There is a land grab here. It’s driven by scarcity. It’s driven by public markets and mostly it’s driven by lawyers. Who are Trying sometimes to do their best but who make a mistake about what it would mean to do their best.

So first a little bit of background if you rob somebody’s house or if you vandalize someone’s car the cops should show up at your house and arrest you that’s their job, but there are no copyright police and there are no patent police that patents copyrights and trademarks are about civil action what it means. Is that if you own one of these things or you think you own one of these things you can sue someone else it is peer-to-peer one lawyer Sue’s another lawyer and in general when we’re talking about this sort of civil action the person with the most money who cares the most will ultimately Prevail not always sometimes the good guy wins, but often if a giant Corporation decides to put The screws to somebody by spending a fortune on lawyers lawyers who aren’t keeping track of what’s right and what’s wrong but simply keeping track of how to win.

We have a challenge. And so before we go down the road of as a Creator playing in that space we need to decide if we want to be in the business of hiring lawyers engaging with the other teams lawyers spending the time and money to litigate for these right. Which might be morally hours that’s not the question.

The question is, is it a choice? We want to make in this short riff. I want to talk about the three kinds of intellectual property why they’re generally a good idea and how to understand the differences and when to use them, so let’s start with patents patents are new useful and non-obvious inventions.

Traditionally there a device that you can get a patent on anything except a nuclear weapon and a perpetual motion machine and you used to have to bring in the device itself and show the patent examiner exactly what you had invented and the reason that we want to give inventors protection from being copied is simple, it takes a bunch of years to be able to invent something new useful and non-obvious and in exchange for you, too. Looking the world exactly how it works.

The government gives you a limited number of years where you’re the only person who’s allowed to make something that works exactly that way so you can see the advantages here by showing everyone exactly how it works. You’re making it easier for the next inventor to come up with something better than yours.

That’s good for all of us not good for you, but good for all of us and in exchange you get the profit from all that work you put into your invention. Now, there are people who would like to broaden what it means to have a patent. So Amazon got a patent on one-click shopping. Now you could argue that one-click shopping is obvious because once you hear the phrase one-click shopping, you know exactly what it is.

However back then the patent office was giving out process patents like candy and so Amazon grabbed one. Today, it really doesn’t make sense for you to go get a patent unless a you have at least $25,000 to risk on the process of time and money. It takes to get one and be once you have one you believe it will help you with Finance or some other business building activity that will give you the money to then. Sue the people you think are infringing on your patent.

As you can tell I’m not a giant fan of patents. I have a process patent. I invented something when I was at Yahoo! That would enable a digital currency of attention online. It was super fun to invent. I’m glad I don’t have to be in the business of protecting it the other two kinds of intellectual property are a lot more relevant to this discussion.

The first one is trademark Trade Mark is what it sounds like it is the mark that we put on the thing that we sell. Trade it goes all the way back to the idea of Wedgwood China because you wanted when you bought Wedgwood China to know that Wedgwood made it it goes back to the days of bass and Guinness and beers in Britain. You wanted to know if you bought a bass ale you are getting a nail made by bass. There was a mark on The Keg there was a Mark that made it clear who made it you can see why this is useful. Oh to our culture because if it wasn’t in place then anyone could pretend to make anything and it would be extremely difficult for someone to invest in maintaining quality.

But of course because there are laws and there’s money and there are lawyers. It has been exploited Pat Riley the basketball coach got a trademark for the word three-peat. Well, the word three-peat is a fascinating coinage for Happens apparently if a sports team wins three years in a row, but no it’s not a trade Mark. It’s not a trademark because it doesn’t tell you who made some goods and services owning the right to put the word three-peat on a t-shirt does not help anyone. It is not in our culture’s interest to make it so that people can start stealing phrases from the culture like the color orange or the word entrepreneur and try to keep other people from using it be able to start Atlantic magazine Time magazine or Entrepreneur magazine because the names of those magazines tell us who made the magazine but if you want to run an entrepreneurial Workshop or not trinomial conference or an entrepreneurial something else should be allowed to do that because word entrepreneur is a word it is not the source of goods and services.

What does this mean for you? Well, if you are a creator of something And you want to be known as the originator of those goods or services. It really helps to a pick a word or phrase that is really obscure unique original just yours because it’s tempting to call your new startup apple or orange or blue.

But as soon as you do something like that the odds are somebody else who has already tried. To claim that word or phrase for their line of goods or services is going to come after you and then you’re setting yourself up for needless heartache and be something that goes with a find a core domain that matches the name you want before you start using the name. Here’s the reason why if you own a Kimbo.com, it’s really unlikely that a big powerful company. And akimbo is out there protecting its trademark because if they were they would probably own a Kimbo.com before you did and so it is not as valid as a trademark search but it is a fine place to go. That doesn’t mean you have to own the basic.com for any name you want. But what I am proposing is that you pick a distinctive trademark not a descriptive or a generic one. So what do I mean by this distinctive? I-i’ve also known as fanciful means that you pick a phrase that has absolutely nothing to do with the thing you do. So if you wanted to come up with a new line of cars calling that brand gefilte fish is probably safe because gefilte fish has nothing to do with electric cars on the other hand. If you decide to call those cars Edison that’s getting a little bit closer. If you decide to call those cars electric, well, you’re not going to get a trademark for that because the word electric describes what you do it is descriptive. It is close to generic. It is the name of the category itself.

So what we’re looking for is a fanciful term that has not been used in the area in which you work that you can win by protecting and part of that means that your SEO will take care of it. Self because if you pick a unique phrase one, where if you type it into Google you’re the first match now your job is simply to get people not to type in the generic. I’m looking for window screens but to type in your name because if your name is the only one they will find you now. Once you have a trademark in mind, you have the option of registering it registering. Trademark simply means filling out some forms paying a little bit of money and sending it into the government. There are legal advantages to registering a trademark but it is not required. What is required is that you use it that you use it in interstate commerce selling something to somebody else over state lines regularly promoting yourself building the website, etc, etc, and treating it like a trademark. That’s why you’ll see a little TM after a logo because what it says is am I the person who made this thing am considering this my trademark hands off after you submit your paperwork. If you choose to do that the government posts it publishes it and says to the world this guy this woman.

They think they want to trade mark on this any objections. And if no one objects you get an r with a circle that you can put after your brand name. That’s a way of saying not only do I think this is my trademark government the United States. Agrees with me again. As soon as you publish your trademark for opposition opposition might show up.

Now if you’re building something of scale and significance better to have the opposition show up early rather than late but when opposition shows up that’s going to cost you money as well a totally irrelevant aside, there’s all this arguing that goes on in trademark and copyright lesson patent, but in trademark and copyright because Everybody gets to make up new rules as they go.

It is one of the most plastic forms of law because you have adversarial parties on either side arguing for what they want to argue until very recently couldn’t get a registered trademark in the United States for a term that was offensive. And no I’m not going to say any offensive words on this podcast because they offend me as well.

But I think you could imagine why the government doesn’t want to be in the business of memorializing hateful or offensive. Worms in their paperwork and honoring that person with a registered trademark. Well recently a rock group with a term that many people might consider offensive certainly offensive to the members of the rock group itself fought all the way to the Supreme Court and won their case, so it’s entirely possible that you could name your brand something offensive ask your local attorney.

And then the third one the third one is copyright copyright. Does not protect your idea if you want to write a fantasy novel about a young boy wizard who goes to a school in England and finds all these Adventures you can do that because ideas are free and a good thing too. It’s a good thing that we can take ideas because if we can’t well then we wouldn’t have West Side Story if we can’t almost every play every book every Except every business every painting would be against the law.

You can paint a picture of somebody sitting in the park. That’s not a protected idea the first person who painted a picture of someone sitting in a park could not say to everybody else. Nope. I own the idea of painting people sitting in the park. What a copyright protects is a specific expression of an idea if You want to write this fantasy novel and the main character’s name is Harry and his friends name is Hermione.

No, you can’t do that because it has been conquered sized written down by the original Creator. She owns the copyright in Harry Potter’s Adventures. So as soon as you write something down, whether it’s a painting a musical composition and sa a blog post the words the specific words There’s a copyright in those and you own it and you don’t have to do anything for that copyright to exist as soon as you publish as soon as you put that in front of one other person. You have a copyright in it.

Now. That doesn’t mean you can do anything with that copyright because once again, it’s up to you to start chasing people suing people filling out dmca forms Etc. That’s a choice so we could spend all day talking about What’s the best strategy to protect your writing your idea Etc but I have a different take on it. And again like trademark.

You can file papers to memorialize your copyright with the government. It’s not as important as it used to be used to be you had to send actual books to the Library of Congress. This was a clever way for them to make sure they had plenty of books in their library, but now thanks to the Berne convention and other updates in copyright you don’t have To do anything.

If you care about this keep track of when you did it print it out put it in a folder. But the fact is you own the copyright if someone has put something in writing in photography in pixels in ink don’t take it because it’s theirs. Okay. So what should we do about people stealing our ideas? There are only two things I can think of one is you could go chase those people you could harass those people you could make them stop and the second thing you could do is make more ideas.

You have the moral and legal right to chase people who steal your stuff I can tell you because I have partners that if you steal my audio book and post it on YouTube my partners and I will cause you to take it down because I owe it to them. But if you want to take one of my blog posts and post it somewhere and make it clear that I’m not you and you’re not me.

Well, then that’s okay with me because I’m just gonna have another blog post tomorrow. That doesn’t mean you should have to do this doesn’t mean you should have to let anybody who wants to take something you wrote and put it in the world put it in the world, but it’s a choice and it’s the choice as a Creator as Tim O’Reilly is pointed out. We think our problem is piracy, but our real problem is obscurity obscurity. Don’t know you they don’t trust you. They don’t want to hear from you.

And if you come up with an idea that gets shared if you come up with a video that’s put in lots of places. If you come up with a meme that spreads you’re probably not going to get any royalties from that but what you will get from that is the credit that goes to the originator what you will get from. That is the chance to do it again.

So I’m not arguing its Patent Trademark or copyright in this rant. I’m simply pointing out that we have choices to make choices to make as Publishers don’t steal stuff you’re better than that don’t violate someone’s copyright or trademark or patent because you might get sued it might cost you a fortune. It will distract you for a long time to come and it’s nothing for you to be proud of but if you’re a Creator you also have Since to make decisions to make about where you will put your time and energy that when we approached creation from a position of insufficiency, it feels like this idea.

The best idea we’ve ever had is probably the last idea we’re ever going to have and so we get into the mindset of how do we protect it? But if we can approach creativity through a sense of abundance, we realize that the $10,000 we might have to spend protecting this or the $30,000. We might want to spend. Panting it. We would probably be better off building a network effect instead building a community building connection building the authority that comes from being the Creator and then going on to the next thing so I’m thrilled that there’s a regime in place to protect people who own things but not things you can put in your pocket simply things that change our lives, but we need to use that wisely. We need to commit to not being a trademark bully.

Not chasing people down because their store has the word Backcountry in it or because they dare to call themselves and entrepreneur and yes as creators. We need to think really hard about the change we seek to make and the best way to make it. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time this podcast like all my podcasts is copyright 2020.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back in a second with some questions from Previous episodes, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at akimbo are up to visit akimbo.com go to find out about their new. Upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks.

It’s Maria.

Hey Seth. My name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump. This is Caitlin. Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth.

My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex.

Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Chris. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I do love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any other episode, please visit akimbo link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2sd click the appropriate button questions this week from all over the world and they’re intricately related. Here we go.

Hey, so, this is Osama from Karachi Pakistan, and I want to go ask you a question regarding which X to choose, so I was reading the practice in the process of reading the practice and I just finished burning that g was a brilliant book hunch. And so my question was that after reading hunch.

I was able to recognize a lot of problems that people face in the construction sector in my country and I was coming up with an idea. I love an app that would solve the problem of sourcing and all this issues and it will also make a community which would Help other people who are beginning to build a house to create something which would be both communal. It would have the network effect and also would make building the house easier and so it’s not just about me. It’s a generous I have because something because this is something that I struggle with when I took on the challenge to build my parents house and so but before reading hunch, I was in the process of reading a lot of books about Consulting and Blair ends brilliant book when without pitching and all the stuff. So I was really moving towards building a brand design agency.

And so after reading hunch I felt like the act of making Consulting agency is somehow less generous compared to something which is building this app, which I’ve been thinking about for two or three years now and so my question is that yes building a brand design agency is easier but building this is a lot harder.

I don’t have any funding. I don’t know any people and so what is worth pursuing right now for me? Is it the brand design agency something that I really like building? But I’m not. As I don’t feel as committed or as fulfilled internally as I do with this app idea it so I really wanted to ask you like what should I pursue as a beginner in business and someone who’s never built something?

What should I do? I really really really appreciate the work you do you’ve changed my life from multiple times with every single page with every single line, and I really want to thank you and I’m looking forward to your answer.

Thank you for this Osama.

Thank you for being generous. Thank you for seeing the markets in the people who need the work that you do long time ago before people noticed that there was this internet thing. I came up with this ornate plan to Pioneer the way people might be able to use email to spread ideas, but I was only able to do that because a dozen years before I had started a book. company when you are an entrepreneur starting out without a lot of funding without access to Silicon Valley without a platform to stand upon my strong advice to you is to find clients who are easy to find and ready to pay you for the work you’re going to do that bootstrapping your work meaning your funding it with money from your clients not funding it by mortgaging your house or by going to a a bank or going to a venture capitalist focuses the mind because it forces you a Steve blank is talked about to get customer traction to develop relationships with customers because if they’re not paying you nothing is happening the idea of a consultancy in Pakistan for Brands.

Probably not a crowded space right this minute and you know who the people are who need to hire you and you can probably outline how you can Create value for them and by getting paid to create value for them you build a foundation you build momentum, you build credibility you build networks, and so months or years from now when you have the resources to launch this multi-sided market place app for people building a house.

You will not need to make it pay in a week or Fortnight because you’ve got momentum and entrepreneurs benefit from that. Oil changing the culture benefit from that every once in a while some college student gets it right right out of the bat and the next thing you know, they’ve changed everything but that almost never happens that one of the beauties of being in college when you’re starting a business as I started a business is you don’t have rent to pay if you figured out how to cover that because you’re in college. Anyway, you have plenty of time you’re surrounded by smart people who are eager to support you. I’m a huge fan of taking that Sort of Swing when you’re in college and have time to do so work for Michael Dell and for a bunch of other people but most of us aren’t in college. Most of us are trying first to overcome the inertia that comes from having a job and to that. I say find a market that knows it needs you charge them appropriately give them more than they pay for repeat and then once you’ve got momentum understand sunk costs and your dreams well enough. Enough to take a deep breath and go do the even harder more generous work.

Thanks for this except. This is Alex from Richmond, Virginia. Thank you for your blog’s your books your podcast. They have all been great teachers to me in my work. You inspired me to start my own blog which I send twice a week via email. I’m really proud of what I’m creating. I feel like it’s great work, but I’m struggling to find an audience.

Now I tell myself that the blog is just for me. The purpose of it is to clarify my thoughts and to keep me creating but I can’t shake the desire to want more subscribers. So my question for you, is this should I care who subscribed should I care? How many people are subscribed? If not, how do I stop caring?

But if so, how do I expand my reach? What should I do?

Thank you for this and thank you for the work you’re doing here’s the question. What we willing to pay for an audience because audience is rarely come free. It might take time. It might take Sweat Equity. It might even take money. You might have to compromise what you want to talk about. You might have to focus on topics that don’t interest you so much you might have to adopt a voice a point of view that the audience wants not the one that you want to share.

If you’re not willing to pay any of those prices if you want to make the blog you want. To make or the podcast you want to make or the book you want to write then that’s what you should do. It doesn’t matter what the medium is. It’s up to you because you can and if you persist it, maybe the 10 listeners get you 20 listeners get you a hundred listeners and then you’re on your way, but maybe not but the journey is still worth it because you are developing your voice on the other hand.

If you’re willing to pay to get people to listen to you then go do that not with Money, but by understanding who it’s for and what it’s for by showing up for the right people in the right way that makes them want to listen and even more important want to tell the others because as soon as we start doing it for the audience, we are engaging in a bargain and the bargain is for people who want this.

I have this I have this come here it is if you can’t make that bargain then it really pays to say, this is a Blog Or me this is a podcast for me. This is a book for me. I wrote it in my voice for me to read it. And if you want to please feel free, but this is for me nothing wrong with that and if someone listens to it, that’s fine, but it’s not for them. It’s for me good luck with it and to cheer you up.

Listen to the next question Mesa Stewart here from Fredericton Canada this week.

I celebrated my one-year anniversary. Sorry since launching my podcast now after 52 episodes. I’ve seen a number of really interesting things happen one. I’ve been able to have access to guests that I would have never otherwise been able to connect with to I’ve developed a modest audience that continues to grow week after week and three I was able to break into an industry and get a job as a result of putting my thoughts out there, but I’m committed three. Years to this project and so as I’m now one third of the way into the project, I want to time take some stock and see where else I can go with this.

Now. I know the point of having a podcast is not to get super famous or to get paid necessarily, but I would like to use this as a point of Leverage for future opportunities as someone whose early in my career. How do you think I should be thinking about this podcast as both a long-term project, but also as a catapult that can help me Future opportunities would love to hear your thoughts on that.

Thanks.

Congratulations.

This is the Home Run of podcasting not getting acquired by Pandora or Spotify. But in fact figuring out how to use your podcast to show up in the world as you want to to build connections and credibility and get to the next spot. Can it catapult you to the next level? Well, my hunch is that the podcast is done much of What you set out for it to do in a three-year period of time your commitment doesn’t mean you have to stick with it forever your commitment to your listeners to yourself to your career is that you were looking for a certain result.

My hunch. Is that sticking with it a bit longer make sense? Because you want to develop a portfolio a portfolio that includes your podcast but lots of other things as you assemble a catalog of projects because As I’ve written about projects are really good way to build a career as long as we accept that each one can be a sunk cost that we can walk away from one when it ceases to serve us as long as the promise that we have made to the people who are engaging with the project isn’t one that would damage us or them if we wrapped the whole thing up.

So going forward. You can hone your voice. You can be more specific about who it’s for. Or and what it’s for you can push yourself to find ever more generous projects. You can reach out to a sama and Pakistan and figure out how to broaden the way you’re talking about what you do to intersect with what he’s talking about.

All of these things we’ve together it’s not cut and dried. It’s a lot more complicated than that. Thanks everybody for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to English yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all NBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah. That’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you.

When are you going to face those fears? I’m not gonna let you hide you got to show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical. But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask That question it’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -sitting-in-judgment- <==

Hey Seth, this is Michael in Rogers Arkansas. I love for you to talk about the tension between two ideas that hear you talk about a lot one is using flags with intent, you know, putting the right design into an event or actually making your website look pretty but also not using the same visual cues to judge someone a book by their cover from their ethnicity or background or so, how can you turn on seeing the flags in the right way and some context but turn maybe some of The flags that you see in others off what brains face do used to do that?

Thanks.

Hey, it’s F and this is a Kimbo.

We’ll be back in a second with the first podcast ever about kerning. But first here’s a message from our sponsor.

I came both small business Workshop is back its back because it works find out what you’re missing find out how to work. It better find out the path forward. Here’s my friend Ramon Ray to tell you about it in this Workshop.

You’ll learn what you need to start and grow your business students have told us that the workshop helped them think and rethink their assumptions about small business success students said, they no longer felt alone in growing their business. Listen, we know owning a business has a lot of challenges.

And in the small business Workshop, we give you the framework to help you make the choices. You need to make to overcome these challenges. I can’t wait to see you in the akimbo small business Workshop find out more at akimbo.com.

/ go hope to see you there.

Why on Earth would you do an audio podcast about kerning the little spaces in between the letters while we’re going to try that because it’s a great answer to this generous question. Kerning is the art in setting type of nestling letters next to one another. So if we think about a k and an e the E should be closer to the k then it would be too. Say an N.

That’s because the K has those little sticks that hang out in the E can Nestle quite nicely underneath the sticks. If you visit the show notes at a Kimbo dot link. You will see the greatest XKCD cartoon ever which is all about kerning. And once you see it, you will never be able to unsee it and that’s the thing. That’s where we begin because people who don’t understand or care about kerning I don’t see it.

They don’t see type or if you want to call them fonts. They simply see the words on the page and they go about their business on the other hand. There are people like me who can’t help but notice.

Why exactly did you set this in Comic Sans?

Why are you using a Sans serif font to write this book? And why didn’t you take care to Kern this headline properly and why are In a display font when you shouldn’t be I noticed these things lots of people do not most people but lots do so what to do with this information. I’m not sharing the information with kerning with you because I care about you and your type setting I’m doing it because the metaphor for a two-part process part one noticing part to doing something about it.

So let’s begin with noticing Do you notice the way it appears on the page? Do you notice that a certain kind of person whether they are tall or blond-headed or bald or walk with a little bit of a limp is attractive to you. Do you notice that certain smells or sounds or environments make you on edge or appeal to you?

If you don’t notice these things then what’s happening is a set of Is manipulating you or changing you without you realizing it? So the first part of the job is to start getting better at seeing semiotics start getting better at seeing flags and signs and understanding why you are drawn or repulsed by something in the environment the late great Jay Levinson, the author of The guerrilla marketing books and my friend used to tell the following story.

He was one of the people who worked much to his Chagrin on the early Marlboro Man rebranding and he also worked with the folks at Leo Burnett and many of the Great advertisers in the 60s and 70s. Well one day Jay was hustling to a meeting and he got in the cab and the cab he’s driving him and they get to talking and the cabbie says so what do you do and Jay says, well I make ads and so the cap says Oh you mean your in the ad game?

And they says well, yeah, I guess you could say that and the cab driver says well that stuff never works on me. It Just for kicks. Jay said yeah. Well what kind of toothpaste do you use and the cab driver turned to him using a slogan that 60 years old and said, well I use gleam, but that’s just because I don’t have time to brush after every meal.

I should have brushed his teeth.

You’re right brushing after meals is important to help fight the K and if you can’t brush after every meal brush often and use gleam between brushings are harmful to positive food and bacteria forms on teeth proper brushing with gleam removes most of this harmful deposit so brush often, even if you can’t brush after every meal and use gleam And the reason that joke works is because obviously the ad game did work on this cab driver that all toothpaste being basically the same he had Chosen One based on their slogan their unique selling proposition their positioning in a crowded Marketplace, but he didn’t want to acknowledge that so when you go out to buy a new car or think about who you’re going to vote for or decide what treatment you’re going to use for an illness.

Question you need to ask yourself is why do I think this if everyone doesn’t think it if it’s not something that would relentlessly win everytime in a double-blind study. What was it that made me decide that this was the one for me that most people use the laundry detergent that their parents did or if they don’t they shifted for a really good reason that most people are drawn to something about the visual appearance of others.

Some people are allergic to close talkers other people don’t care. Can you notice that working to notice? It starts us down the path to being able to do something about it. So if you’re on your 15th heartbreak and you notice that you are drawn to a certain kind of person with a certain set of bad habits Then do you do something about it?

Do you make the conscious decision to run away from anybody who looks like this it’s easy to believe that we’re not racist. It’s easy to believe that we mean well, but if we look honestly at what decisions we make after we get a signal from the world we might discover that we are judging people. Judging them by their race or their gender or their height judging them by their apparent income judging them by who introduced us to them judging us by the accent they have or don’t have we need to a notice these things and then we need to come up with a good reason to stop acting on them or to begin acting on them.

If it turns out that you are eliminating a huge portion of the population who could Work for you productively who could engage with you emotionally. If you are rejecting them simply because of a nonverbal clue that you’re getting you are hurting yourself and them but first we have to notice it and then we can choose to act on it and the third part of this very short rant is this Everyone’s doing the same thing to us.

Everyone’s doing the same thing to the work that we create to the appearance that we present all the time. Now, you could just say that’s okay or you could choose to imagine that you are being judged for things that you don’t want to be judged for notice it and then you could choose to do something about it. So I will confess right now.

You are in a zoom call with me and you are using a virtual background or Worse an animated virtual background. I am going to judge you. I’m going to judge you fairly harshly.

I will probably not engage with you at the level.

You would like me to engage. Now. You could say tough luck for Seth or you could decide that if it’s important you not be judged on your Zoom background then get a better resume background or get rid of it altogether that if you go to. A funeral in a clown suit people are going to judge you now, you might be okay with that.

But if it’s not going to get you the outputs and the results that you seek don’t wear clown suit to a funeral Kern your type get smart about how you are being judged where this really becomes tragic is when we talk about people who are being judged who can’t easily change how they are being We have plenty of evidence that when a woman changes her email name so that it is not obvious. What her gender is the response rate the yes rate. The meetings taken rate in many Industries goes up.

That’s not fair. That’s just wrong. We have enormous amounts of evidence that show that people of color or that people who don’t match the ethnic background of those that they seek to connect with our prejudged and often criticized or rejected simply because of a shortcut a bad shortcut that the person whose filtering is taking and if we’re going to build a productive dignified Fair Society, we’ve got to see it.

And after we see it we have to decide to act on it and it’s easy to get into a real complicated conversation about affirmative action, but the Question that companies and organizations need to ask themselves. Is this are we already judging people before we do something to try to fix our problem the answer is of course, where did we decide to recruit when we went off campus to recruit?

How did we decide to post our help wanted ads what barriers are we putting in the way of some people and not others and aggressively working to undo that? Creates an opportunity for that organization to cast a wider net that wider net will get them different points of view more Talent it ends up being in their interest.

And yes, if you are one of the people being judged it is a very difficult choice to make it is a difficult choice to decide that you will seek to get by by concealing your quote true nature versus standing up to make a point something you’re gonna have to Again, and again so faced with all this unfairness. We get back to this beginning concept first you notice and then you decide to take some action and I can’t tell you what to do most of the time my entire life. I’ve gotten the benefit of the doubt, but when I started producing work that I had a pitch to people I discovered I almost never got the benefit of the doubt. It didn’t look right didn’t sound right didn’t come from a voice. They were ready to hear it from and so I made the intentional choice to change what my work looked like and felt like so that it would be judged in a way. They got me and the person I was seeking to serve the results that they sought that’s not fair.

It’s not easy, but it’s clearly true.

These are all variations on privilege the privilege of being able to know what the cues and the Those are the privilege of being able to match them maybe because of the way you were raised maybe because you had the ability to learn them the privilege of having the benefit of the doubt before you even open your mouth that centuries of white enforced Supremacy have created signals that have nothing to do with the work itself, but that are baked in to how our culture works that enforced male Supremacy has sent signals. Built deep into the culture that make it really difficult for someone who isn’t a European white male to get the benefit of the doubt.

And so when we asked people to send different signals signals it some people say feel authentic to them and others say not only isn’t this authentic to how I feel it’s something I’m not even capable of doing because of how I appear when I show up we are doing something shameful. We are reinforcing a tragedy.

so what we’ve got to figure out how to do as a signal reading and Signal sending species is we’ve got to figure out which ones really matter and which ones are simply there to reinforce an injustice that arrived long before we got here because repeating the Injustice doesn’t help us we have to begin to make a commitment to learn to see about how we make our decisions about what matters in our culture and in the things we engage with and what doesn’t so So that we can get back on track to creating possibility and connection to make things better by making better things, but that doesn’t always mean it’s going to rhyme with what happened yesterday. In fact, it quite likely woot.

So that’s a lot for one rant, but I appreciate the question. I hope that resonates with people. Thanks. We’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening in a second. We’ll be back with a question from a previous episode. But as you’ll see Ironically, here’s a message from our sponsor.

I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit. Akimbo.com go to find out about their new. Upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

It’s Maria. Hey Seth.

My name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is an apology.

This is Caitlin.

Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth.

My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They said this is Rex. Hey sup.

Hi, this is Russell news from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question. As you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about anything we’ve been talking about please visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link-16 lick the appropriate button. And yes, this question is about the efficacy of advertising.

Hi Seth, it’s Matt from Chicago. I wanted to get you riffing on an idea. I just can’t let go of it comes from Steve Levitan. The idea is that advertising does not work. It’s a courageous question. I love it because of that. However, we live in a world where people are paying for clicks. I know folks in that space love to hide behind their website analytics justify their jobs, but what am I left to believe?

Thanks for all the work you do. I will continue to cause a ruckus wherever I go.

Thanks for this mat at my friend Steve Dubner did in fact do two episodes about whether advertising works. The first part is whether TV advertising works and the second one is whether digital advertising works. And there are significant problems with their analysis. There’s nothing wrong with the studies that they cited but the questions are deeply flawed. So my history with advertising back in 1983 when I was only 23 years old and worked at Spinnaker software. They handed me millions of dollars to spend on advertising and I have to say I don’t think any of it worked particularly. Well because even though Spinnaker was the 200th biggest Advertiser in Erica back in 1983.

We were so small that we didn’t have a huge presence in the places where we were running the ads fast forward to the 90s and the 2000s at the dawn of the internet. I was working a prodigy where there were ads everywhere and then after Yahoo, bought my company I discovered how advertisers were behaving when they bought ads on the home page of Yahoo, and in other places, so I’ve seen it from lots of different angles.

But we need to ask the questions properly. So here we go, a successful consumer packaged goods company a successful multinational firm a successful industrial entity is a little bit like a boat that’s right on the crest of a wave and if the captain of that boat does a good job it can hang on the crest of that wave for a long time.

And Magic is up there if you are looking for the magic of Large-scale capitalism it is the magic of all of these forces pushing you in exactly the right direction at high speed people who surf get hooked on it. But if you make just a few miscalculations, you’re not at the crest anymore you fall backwards off the wave like Blackjack chewing gum, which no one listening to this has bought in a really long time.

And so there are a lot of things that could lead you to be on the crest of that wave. But once you’re on the crest of that wave and you are spinning off so much money spending a whole bunch of that on advertise. It is a ridiculously cheap insurance policy because the next person who’s going to come along and take the crest of the wave away from you will not be able to get to that Crest by buying advertising behind your back because you can outspend them.

And so yes in the 30s 40s 50s and 60s, you could build a brand from scratch trouble with pop o matic you get the idea. He sunk my battleship by buying a bunch of ads to get yourself to the crest of that wave and then after that period of time a smart cost-cutting CMO could do some interesting studies some research. Stop running ads in Pittsburgh as Dubner talks about and discover that the ads are wasted. So do Outrun them until one day your Blackjack chewing gum until one day you have fallen behind these companies. They’re not profit maximizers. They are filled with people who are career maximizers and one of the things that keeps their career going is they do what their boss used to do. And another thing that keeps their career going.

Is that the stock price stays where everybody wants it to stay or moves up and in both of those situations you have Incentive not to maximize quarterly profit, but to continue dominating shelf space to continue owning market share that what drives big advertising the people are spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars a year is not that they are adroitly measuring using legrand’s transforms and other things that are talked about by researchers, but that they are on the crest of a wave and they want to keep it going back when I was at Yahoo. I was stunned. And and how easy it was for Yahoo to sell ads. I had made hundreds perhaps thousands of sales calls when I was at yoyodyne when we were trying to persuade Brands to buy email advertising. We had a 70 percent open rate of 35 percent response rate. We were pioneering an industry that has now become worth billions and billions of dollars, but we had a really hard time getting people to go first, but Yahoo.

Yahoo had caught the crest of the wave and so the Phone rang they didn’t have a sales force. They had order takers advertisers would show up and insist that they wanted to buy the home page of Yahoo. Not because it worked because they didn’t know if it worked they weren’t even wanting it to work because it would have threatened the TV they understood they were doing it because their boss needed them to because the shareholders needed them to because they were on the crest of a wave and they wanted to stay there. This is separate from the discussion of short-term thinking direct marketers.

Who are finding niches on the internet and exploiting them sometimes at our expense to keep going or to grow Corinthian was a chain of private for-profit colleges. I’m using the word colleges Loosely that was basically a scam to take Federal Loan money and pay for a giant Behemoth of an institution that was ripping off people who were struggling on the edges of our economy and in one year, they spent more than Hundred and twenty million dollars on Internet advertising and it allowed them to get to 600 million dollars in revenue and given the profit margin of the institution.

They were all fine with that if they hadn’t spent a hundred and twenty million dollars. There’s no way they would have sold 1 million dollars worth of tuition the hundred and twenty million dollars had a five times multiple. They spent a dollar they got $5 back and they did it as much as they could. Good and then it all comes crashing down that happens sometimes but advertising direct marketing easily measured aimed low hanging fruit that hasn’t been exploited yet. We can show over and over again that that works the same way that Pottery Barn makes money sending out catalogs, even though they know most of the people don’t open the catalog or buy from them the minute that spending money on catalog stops paying they will stop sending out catalogs.

So what we’re seeing are many many All intertwined there is the market of the 60s 70s and 80s in which TV advertising was way under priced and if you could buy a bunch of ads it was almost certain to work better. If you didn’t buy it, if we look at the early days of the internet for certain sinecures, it worked great, but most of the time it didn’t it was simply a signal if we look at the auctions that Google and others run if a lot of people are bidding in the auction. It is almost certain you’re going to I pay too much the fact is that if you are trying for a category on Facebook that other people are trying also to run ads on its Facebook’s job to make sure you don’t make any money doing that because what they want is a full auction audience they want as many bidders as possible and if some drop out that’s okay because there are more and they want to take all the money off the table.

So perhaps the best news in an online Internet auction is You come in second because it means your competitor overpaid for something and now you have the revenue to spend on serving customers instead. So I’m ranting and lots of directions here because I’m not defending advertising per se I’m saying we need to ask the right question.

And the question is for this audience given the media that is available to me. Is there a way to reach them with impact with? Quincy so that over time they come to believe that my brand is worth something either because I get someone who’s not in the category to enter the category or more likely I get someone in the category to pay extra for my brand because if people aren’t paying extra you don’t have a brand it’s the extra that pays for all of the things you put on top of the generic item now in the podcast. Abner puts in the side about generic items because in fact in most cases certainly in a double-blind study, they work just as well as branded ones.

However, we’re not double-blind. However, we care about the brands. We tell ourselves a story and if we think that story is worth it. We’re happily paying it. Where does the story come from? It comes from ads it comes from websites it It comes from YouTube videos it comes from the way a company expresses itself about what it does and why it does it.

And once we know the story we tell the story to our peers. We tell the story to our friends because telling the story by wearing the logo by showing what kind of car we have as we drive down the street, we can’t help it makes us feel better. That’s part of the reason we paid extra earlier in this episode, which I recorded long before I got Question I talked about gleam and J Levinson.

What I left out from that riff is simple. The reason that The Gleam story is so hard to tell these days without using the add on the podcast is that people don’t remember gleam. And the reason that people don’t remember gleam is that they stopped advertising so Rush often, even if you can’t brush after every meal so I can make eight or ten podcasts about this.

Here’s just what I’ll say I don’t think advertising is going away anytime soon. And I know advertising doesn’t need any Defenders. I would rather spend a lot of time talking about what’s wrong with advertising but one thing is clear. There are business reasons to keep your advertising going so you don’t fade away and there are business reasons to do measured direct marketing because you can show it works and there are business reasons for Challenger Brands to run ads to go after brands that are too lazy or too cheap.

To talk to new audiences in new ways. Thanks for listening. We’ll see y’all next time.

What’s this stuff some cereal pop be good for you. I’m not going to try. Let’s get Mikey. Yeah don’t need it. He ate everything.

He likes it.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a SS Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea to anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s And but when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you when you got a face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. A nation we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -whale-hunting- <==

Breaker breaker 1-9. This is kfv 2338 coming with you checking in seeing how it’s going down the road. Hey, it’s F and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about CB radio the Clubhouse app and what it means to go hunting the whales but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

I can Bose small business Workshop is back its back because it works find out what you’re missing. Find out how to work. It better find out the path forward. Here’s my friend Ramon Ray to tell you about it in this Workshop.

/ go hope to see you there.

Yes, I still remember my CB license number K FV 2338. It’s unclear why I needed a license to use a CB radio in 1973. But I did and we installed one in my dad’s car so that he could call me on his way home from work to tell me that he was on his way home from work. What I most remember about CB radios was Sunday night at Pat’s hot dogs in Buffalo New York Sunday night at five o’clock the From Channel 19 would get together in person just to see what each other looked like.

It wasn’t really that Pleasant and experienced people were better on the radio. Then they were in person. Well fast-forward 40 or 50 years a pandemic the internet and now we have Clubhouse the fastest-growing app in recorded history that I know of a social app online that only worked with your iPhone that lets You join a chat room by Audio.

Now, what are the rules of Clubhouse the same way? It was a rule of CB radio is that the first rule of Clubhouse is that we always talk about Clubhouse.

Yes, son better stay out of that Hammer Lane then parking lots like to move they’ll turn you into a speed bump then we’ll be calling you a meat wagon.

I’m not really going to do that today. What I want to talk about is something that I noticed when I first encountered it a lesson about how ideas spread. I’m not that good at clubs. I’m not that good at club houses. I wasn’t interested in joining a new Social Network. I also don’t use an iPhone. So even if I wanted to I have to go to a lot of trouble to take the iPad down where I use it as an alarm clock and teach it to get the clubhouse and even then I didn’t have an invitation so it wasn’t even on my radar and then within three days I got not one not two not three, but four invitations from people to join Clubhouse a closed community that you need an invitation to join two of them came from people. I have an enormous amount of respect for this got it on my radar.

I went and I set up an account just to make sure my name was saved and then I looked around not interested. I left one of the reasons I left is because they kept pushing me and pushing me to share my contacts. So let’s go back in time just to Little bit Facebook grew so fast because it was able to pillage your contact list and instantly integrate you with lots and lots of people in your life Pinterest was the fastest-growing web service of its kind and I know this because we were competing with them at squidoo. They grew like a rocket because they hacked the Facebook API in a way that when you joined Pinterest it instantly let all of you Of your contacts know that you now had a page on Pinterest that simple ratchet really changed their growth pattern. So I was hesitant to share my contacts with Clubhouse, but then my friend Chris invited me to do a thing with some people. I also really respect and so I had no choice. I press the button and I shared my contacts and then I saw something that I thought was absolutely stunningly brilliant unclear whether it is manipulative, but it was It and that’s what I want to share with you today.

It explains why I got so many notes in such a short period of time after you share your contacts on clubhouse. What it does is it shows you a list of people who aren’t currently using clubhouse that you can invite in my case. They give me five invites that you could invite to join Clubhouse. Now, here’s the thing that’s been done before but the twist is this you only have five invites and a list is sorted by how many people know the people who are on your list.

So here’s my friend Michael. He has four hundred and thirty eight people on clubhouse who also have him in their contact list 438 now, I have a really interesting choice in front of me because two things motivate almost all you Ends 1 affiliation who’s in who’s out who’s an Insider? Who’s part of something second status roles?

Who’s up?

Who’s down? Who’s moving up? Who’s moving down those two things are the unspoken axes of many of the decisions. We make in culture. They are what get somebody who has enough money to go to work tomorrow because not moving up feels like moving down not being part of something feels like you are. Alone, so here’s this list sorted from 438 down to seven and I’m looking at this list and I’m saying a few things to myself.

One thing I’m saying is wow. I should let Michael know I should let Michael know because he’ll appreciated. He’ll appreciate the fact that I’m giving him a chance to join in with a bunch of people 438 who are waiting for him and part of me is saying wow, my status is going to go. Up because I’m giving Michael something precious one of my five invites. He’ll appreciate me not only is my status going to go up with him.

But he’s my highest status friend. He has so much more status so much more impact in the circles that I travel in than my friends who are down in the tens and the 20s. And so if I’m going to use an invitation, I should use it on someone who a will appreciate it more and be where my status will go up the most because after all All I’m the guy who brought him in and from clubhouses point of view bringing in people who have that many friends.

These folks are whales they are the heavy users. They eat a ton of Plankton. They’re the ones that lots of people know and respect. So if people like us do things like this, which is a definition of culture and Clubhouse figures out how to game the system so that the biggest spreaders stalkers connectors.

Sneezers respected people are the ones who were there early. They have figured out a ratchet a network effect. They have figured out a cycle where more gets them more where the people who are in it want more people like them to join that the only reason that people are in clubhouses because other people are in clubhouse and so the cycle continues I thought this was worth a riff or even a rant because it helps us. Understand how this idea of algorithmically driven cultural change Works in so many elements of our lives.

So if we think about the Dynamics of the 1960s or 70s sure spend a lot of money to Lobby people in Congress. There’s a direct correlation between giving folks like that money and swaying their opinion, but what’s happened as we’ve gotten better and better at analyzing the social graph the digraphs the connections the points of influence is we That might be the output but the steps to get there aren’t as direct as here’s a bunch of money. It’s the smallest viable audience. What’s the group of people that if we could persuade them to go along with the way we think they are more likely to persuade the others that in the organization where you work there are some whales there are people who go to more meetings, right more. Memos. Send more emails are at the Derp of lots of connections and that person is probably not the CEO.

Who is that person?

And who is that person looking to for advice? Who is that person surrounded by as we start to dissect the graphs of what makes the media decide that something is the story of the day what leads a community to back one thing or another they’re all about uneven groups of influence influence that we might not easily be able to see From the outside but people are looking you know that they’re looking they’re scouring for signals.

The idea of our credit history is just the beginning what we’re doing as we work online is leaving a trail behind a trail of what we took and what we gave a trail of who we persuaded and who we were persuaded by and all of this data is getting more and more concrete sized. All of this data is getting more clearly seen and so people are going to use it on evenly Lie to treat different people differently to show up for people with influence with circles with networks because it helps them get to the next spot.

This is just the beginning. It’s going to keep going now. You probably won’t find me on clubhouse very often, but I think we just learned a valuable lesson. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with a deep dive down the rabbit hole in answer to a listener question, but first here is a message. from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp an independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work.

I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit a Kimbo.com go to find out about their new. Upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

Hey Seth. My name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is on the phone. This is Caitlin.

Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth.

My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, please visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki and Bo dot link2sd click the appropriate button. This question sounds pretty simple, but there’s actually a lot going on. Here we go.

Hello Seth Peter cookie from Melbourne with a question on your recent episode on trademarks copyrights and patents. So I’m looking at a number of your books that I have here in my office.

I pulled three down from the shelf and I’ve got another for sitting on my Kindle and I notice if I look at linchpin it says that the front the moral right of the author has been asserted the same thing in this is marketing in. Practice in tribes. However, I notice in the Poke the box and we’re all weird not there which are probably not coincidentally the ones that you published through the Domino project rather than through penguin and other Publishers.

I’ve also written a few books and I have always asserted my moral right with with no idea what that actually means and so my question is firstly what does that mean? What’s the history of asserting these ones moral right as an author and secondly, is there any point to it at all? Does it make any difference at all in the context of trademarks copyrights patents and doing great work?

Thank you for everything. You do big big fan.

So let’s start with Damien Hirst. He’s an artist Cutting Edge out of the UK and has made a fortune Selling paintings some of which have colored dots on them. Well, there’s a collective in Brooklyn that loves publicity called mischief and Mischief bought one of his DOT paintings cut it up into little tiny squares and then sold each Square for a few hundred bucks turning a profit as Went they were making a commentary about what is art anyway, and they were also violating Damien hirst’s moral rights in the United States. Do not the same as they are in France or in England or New Zealand or in Australia. It’s different in a lot of places, but they even violated the VAR a law which added a level of moral rights to certain kinds of Art in the United States about 30 years ago.

So let’s try to decode Code what moral rights are and how lawyers even think about intellectual property because lawyers are a superstitious bunch at the end of every one of my audio books because I have to read the script that the publisher is handed me I have to say and they’d like me to say it in all caps All Rights Reserved and every time I say it I then add of course, there’s no need for me to say this because for more than 20 years after Nicaragua. Signed the Berne convention along with the United States and the Buenos Aires convention became irrelevant. There is no legal reason whatsoever to say. All right reserved when you are reading an audiobook or printing anything. It doesn’t mean anything in all capital letters. It’s just a way for a lawyer to say I’m up on stuff don’t copy this but no it has no legal bearing.

So back to moral right Mauro right is the opposite of the first sale Doctrine the first sale Doctrine came along because a book publisher bobbs-merrill put in all of the books. It was printing if this book was sold to you for less than a dollar. It constitutes copyright infringement. What they were trying to do was control what happened to their books after they sold them to a wholesaler or retailer and it turns out you’re not allowed to do that the same way if you make rubber balls or Baby carriages you can’t say you can’t sell this at a garage sale when you’re done using it copyright creates a piece of property, but you can sell that property to someone because if you couldn’t then there would be no point in making it and once you sell it it’s not yours anymore.

It’s theirs and they can resell it. They can do things with it. They own it, but the market being the market profit Seekers being profit Seekers things started to to shift and so beginning in Europe. They embrace the idea of Droite morale the moral right and what it says primarily almost certainly for visual art.

You can’t change this thing that’s integrity and you have to give me credit for this thing that’s ownership or the idea of creation unless I insist that I remain anonymous. It’s not always apply just to visual art. So Monty Python. Yes. I’ve managed to work Monty Python to yet. Another episode of akimbo actually sued the ABC television network over this very issue. Why because when they wrote the scripts for the BBC for Monty Python and the Holy Grail in the 60s, they were very careful about how they were constructed how they were timed.

This is the Spanish Inquisition.

I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.

Well, the people at the BBC licensed it to Time Life Time life turned around and licensed it to ABC and in each one of those licenses they gave the new publisher distributor Network a chance to edit the work to fit in commercials to make it fit local standards. And so when ABC put together a 90-minute special Of the best of Monty Python Terry Gilliam and the rest of the troop sued ABC and I was amazed to discover that they won that the court said no, you can’t do that because Monty Python has an underlying copyright in the entire structure of this show and you’re not allowed to mess with it. First sale Doctrine be damned.

And so now we see the conflict the conflict. Is that Andy Warhol? Took for example a Superman comic and made it into a work of art. Is that copyright infringement? Well what happens if he buys a copy of Superman comics cuts it out and paste it onto a canvas is he allowed to resell it is Marcel Duchamp allowed to paint a mustache on Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Well, one of the principles of moral right is that it only extends while the are Is alive and so Marcel Duchamp is off the hook because DaVinci was dead by the time Duchamp started to facing his art, but should you be allowed to deface art to make a commentary around it taken to its full extreme moral rights even says that the artist can control who you sell the painting to when it is time to sell it or if you hire an artist to put a fresco on the wall. Of your Banks conference room the artist while alive can say you may not take that down.

You may not renovate this building because I have a moral right and you cannot control it. So the short answer to your question is it means absolutely nothing when penguin writes the artist asserts moral right? Nothing there is nothing in the statute anywhere in the world that says that the artist has to claim it in addition.

Built into moral rights as you may not sell them you cannot give them away. They are there because the argument was made that if you could sell them then they wouldn’t be worth any more than the copyright itself that what legislators were trying to do is treat copyright creation as something separate from the creation of other sorts of property. So I’m of two minds here.

I think that the economic underpinning of what we create enables us to get paid to create it and if And creators over assert something that feels like moral rights. Then people aren’t going to buy things that work for hire enables a lot of people to do work because there are plenty of projects that it would be completely impossible to build. If every single person who worked on any element of that project could assert forever Integrity credit control over what happened to that product after it reaches the marketplace. He’s also a key underpinning of the way. Our economy works is there’s not a lot of room for do-overs. There’s not a lot of room for changing your mind.

You sell some rights in 1965 and then in 1975, it turns out those rights are worth a lot more. We are hesitant to go back and say no we can do that deal over again. If you sold Bitcoin for $8,000, it’s not clear that anyone thinks it’s okay to go back to that person. So I didn’t realize it was going to go to $50,000. I want my Bitcoin back sure. We make exceptions for things like fraud for transactions that aren’t done by consenting adults.

But other than those I think it makes sense that if an artist wants to sell something using the first use Doctrine to someone else they should be allowed to do that and the person who buys, it should be allowed to buy it. Do I think it’s a good idea to cut up Damien Hirst paintings and sell them well as an art project, Checked there’s a long history of doing things like that. The folks at Mischief are good at hype but they haven’t done anything particularly original and so even though I don’t have to say whether or not I’m asserting my moral rights.

I’m not it’s okay with me if someone buys my book cuts it up and turns it into some sandals. I don’t make visual art and I’m just fine bringing my ideas to the world under the current copyright regime the real issue for me is this Disney and other copyright holders the Gershwin estate for example have argued long and hard that copyright must be extended that it must be strengthened that we need to figure out ways to keep people away from whatever it is that they own which makes sense if there’s a shortage if there’s a shortage of people who want to work in Hollywood or in book publishing where in the record business if there’s a shortage of new music coming out then yes, we must strengthen protections. For the artists so that the culture all of us get the benefit of more people creating.

But if there isn’t a shortage if there are plenty of people making plenty of good work, then the culture demands we build an infrastructure where it can be shared and understood. It turns out that there are tons of books The Great Gatsby to just went in to the public domain in the United States this year. That’s absurd.

It’s absurd that The Heirs the And children in the great grandchildren of F Scott Fitzgerald. We’re getting royalty payments all of these years later. Nobody who made the decisions to write or publish The Great Gatsby is still alive. There was no upside in creating extensions to copyright and until there’s a shortage for our culture of ideas worth celebrating and sharing and learning from then I think we need to err on the side of How do we build structures and regimes where these things can spread and where people can enjoy them?

Thanks for letting me rant.

We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution, or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than Internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide.

You got to show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple.

It sounds very commonsensical. But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there but I an show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -modern-choice-theory- <==

Thanks for deciding to listen to this podcast and thanks for not turning it off at any time in the next few minutes. You have a decision to make to keep listening or to turn it off. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about modern Choice Theory, but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

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I haven’t heard anyone talk about this before but I want to share some thoughts with you about decisions about options about leverage and about responsibility. I want to argue that over the last hundred thousand years and particularly in the last 20. There has been a gradual and then rapid expansion in the number of options that every single person on the planet has every day that if you think about hunter-gatherers there are that many important decisions to make in a typical day go left or go right go after that animal or this animal.

Sure, there might be life or death consequences. But as you confront each of those decisions, they are not strange to you. They are the decisions just like the ones you made the day before but now as we confront a new modernity where each of us has way more leverage, we have to embrace the fact that there are choices to be made and if those choices Aren’t things we even see we can’t make them if those choices are things that we would rather avoid then we will try not to see them if we just think about the last hundred and fifty years. We have been through a transition it began with this. Most people were farmers Farmers have to make some substantial decisions every single year what to plant how to use their acreage but most of the time when they are doing their work, The decisions are familiar. The decisions don’t have that much leverage from day-to-day factory work made it even easier to go through the day without making certain kinds of decisions that the choices in front of the factory worker generally involved choosing to do what they were instructed to do by the foreman.

Then we move to freelance work freelance work and small business work. Work often involve more choices. What business are you in? Which clients do you choose? How will you do your work? How do you know when it’s done? What will you choose to learn next? Suddenly? There’s been an explosion in the choices. We have to make as professionals as we seek to go forward then if you choose to go toward entrepreneurship the decisions get In bigger because the options are bigger. Should you raise 1 million dollars or ten million dollars should be going after B2B sales or serving consumers. Should you hire two people 10 people under and people should you shut this plant in the face of a pandemic or stick it out the four elements again options which lead to decisions leverage which means that our choices have repercussions and responsibility.

Which means that if we make a choice, it’s on us about what happens next.

Video games and toys gave kids and teenagers a chance to make decisions without consequences if you build a tower of blocks and it falls over no one knows you don’t get in trouble. You just get to build another Tower of blocks. If you’re playing Tetris or Pacman or online chess and you make a mistake you just get to do it again, but then shifting to massive multiplayer games or considering Social media it shifts again because there are repercussions to your decisions because suddenly they start impacting other people that going on social media is very different than going down the street to have coffee with a friend.

There’s a permanent or semi-permanent record of the choices that you’re making all of the decisions that may or may not impact how you’re engaging with others. Is that what we’ve done is handed millions and millions of people perhaps billions of people a high leverage Choice machine loaded with responsibility where there are options and there are decisions to make over and over again or let’s flip sideways a little bit to Medicine 300 years ago. If you wanted to stay healthy there weren’t that many decisions to make in the 60s. We started saying to people if you Look where if you drink and drive or if you abuse drugs your health will be impacted we can prove it.

Where are you heading Johnny smoke?

How many cylons would be tempted tonight? How many men will lie still Beneath The Sky how many tears will be shared because of you how many more will die suddenly there’s a decision to make with ignoramus repercussions and it won’t impact you maybe for 20 or 30 years 50 years ago.

If you went to the doctor there weren’t that many options about how you were going to be treated. There was one doctor your doctor he or she told you what to do and that’s what you did.

Do you frequently gaze emotionally out the window while sad piano music plays in the background then it’s time to Seek help.

It’s time to ask your doctor about tacos as we started exploring things like Cancer Treatments though.

Suddenly. There were really significant choices to make choices to make about the duration and severity of the treatment we were signing up for and then we open the door to what should we do about end-of-life decisions because end-of-life didn’t used to last for five or 10 years of torture because end-of-life didn’t used to to be a decision that we rightfully should have been discussing with the other people in our family or thinking about things that have turned controversial which probably shouldn’t have is it a decision to vaccinate your kids? Is it a decision to wear a mask or not in the face of a pandemic epidemiologists will make it clear to us that it’s not but some people Amplified by the media would like to make it into a decision. Creating options and those options have enormous leverage because they don’t just impact the person who is making the choice. They impact everyone around that person as well.

And so as we start to look at all of the decisions in front of us, we can become exhausted. What is natural to do is to limit the scope of the decisions that are on our plate because we are exhausted. By living with the responsibility for these choices.

So here’s a really simple example designed to help us see how all of these choices stack up. I was talking to a friend and entrepreneur who’s leading a new company and we discussed the idea of making an explainer video. You’ve probably seen these there about a minute long. Sometimes they have wavy little images that go with them and in one minute or two minutes of VoiceOver combined with a Of Animation explains how a new service or technology Works children grow up fast.

It’s important to make every moment count.

The benefit of an explainer video is you can use it over and over again. It adds energy and a veneer of professionalism to what your building as opposed to having people sit through a really long video explaining something that you could do in a more concentrated form. We’re reading a man. Annual. Okay. So what are the choices? Well Choice One the biggest one. The easiest one to avoid is should I have an explainer video most people who have something to explain never even considered that that’s one of their choices but using online freelance bureaus you can get one built for a couple hundred bucks. You can afford it. If you are running any sort of Enterprise But first you have to realize you could get one made next question.

Who should make it for you? What’s the method? Should you hire a really expensive agency or should you break it down into little pieces and have them done by people who don’t charge very much. Next question. Have you written a brief a design brief showing the person or the team you’re going to hire what you want it to be like when it’s done another Choice. Should that simply be here is one made by a non competitor of ours make it look like this or is it more detailed than that?

Here are the eight points that we want to explain here is the style of images. We want to use here are what the eight images are. Here is the script we would like to use this is the voiceover person that has a tone that we would like to emulate decision decision decision. All of these things are optional they’re optional because if we’re just doing our job, it means we’re answering Incoming email it means we’re going to the next meeting that someone else put on our calendar.

But what is happened just in the last 20 years is that the number of people who get to put something on someone else’s calendar has gone up dramatically that the options that are in front of us keep shifting that the number of places that we can show up with an idea and offer an opportunity for someone to move forward has gone up by many factors of 10 that the leverage keeps increasing and in certain spaces responsibility decreases because people have worked really hard to become trolls to show up and just yell and then run away and other places. We have more responsibility than ever the responsibility to take care of our neighbors the responsibility to stand up for racial Justice the responsibility to own the choices. We are making And again in the face of all of it. It’s easier to say what is on TV tonight? But even that question brings us back to Modern Choice Theory because what’s on TV tonight used to be there are three channels. Which one do you want to watch?

And now it’s everything everything is on TV tonight. And when confronted with everything is on TV tonight more and more people default to well. What are the three hottest things on Netflix? What we know about Google search results is this you can search for almost anything and find a hundred thousand matches and almost everyone more than 95% of the people will click a match from the very first page is that because we know that the things on the very first page are always the best for us, of course not is it because we won’t get any benefit by looking at pages 4 or 8 or 12. Now we know that too.

It’s because Were exhausted we’re exhausted so modern Choice Theory involves realizing we have options understanding that those options bring us leverage that that leverage often requires us to take responsibility. And so we have to make decisions. But when we feel the fatigue setting in we have to make a meta decision and The Meta decision is to decide about deciding to decide if what we do for a living is make decisions. And we don’t make widgets. We don’t make waffles we make decisions and if we’re going to make decisions, the next meta question is for who when who gets to decide which decisions you’re going to make all day that if you journaled all of the decisions you made yesterday or all the ones you expect to have to make tomorrow.

The question is would that list be the list you would choose. If you were doing it with intent, we now live in an era of Maximum choice and most of us are throwing it away. We are letting other people dictate the Rhythm other people dictate the agenda. We don’t have to do that. We can choose to take responsibility.

Not just for the Enterprise that we are part of or the one that we are choosing to run but for the health of us in the people we care about in the people around us that it is. All on the table because we have Amplified our voices, but to what end? I think we’ve Amplified them to make things better. So yes, we’re in the business of making choices.

We should Choose Wisely. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with a couple questions from previous episodes, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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It’s Maria.

Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump pricer warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is And that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you some weeks. They’re a bunch of questions some weeks hardly any so if you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode of this podcast, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s 8 Ki M Bo link-16. Click the appropriate button.

Two questions this week about copyrights patents trademarks and most of all protection but they’re both really quite related. Here we go.

Hello Seth.

I recently discovered you through some references from some friends.

I had a question for you about patents.

I am currently building a product that is new to the market. I have enough money to build the product. But as you mentioned your podcast it could cost up to $25,000 to get a patent attorney to patent the product and those funds are not available. I would be curious to know what the best plan of attack is moving forward because number one I want to protect.

The idea and the concept it does advanced technology in my business. However, once again, I’ve been waiting actually I’ve been waiting ten years to build this and finally got the funds to build it up. That makes sense.

Thank you. Thank you for this and congratulations on getting to the point where you’re about to bring your idea to the world. Here is the truth the truth is that in 1920 or 1904 even 1935 a solo. Enter with a patent could use that patent to make a pile of money in the 1960s. Someone invented the intermittent windshield wiper fortunately, he got a patent because when the big car company stole his idea he then devoted Decades of his life to suing them and ended up winning those lawsuits, but time has passed and now it is 2021, which means that most of the fundamental Diaz that you can get a strong patent on as an individual inventor are done. They’re taken what’s left are either process patents which are sketchy and really hard to win or perhaps maybe just maybe you in your basement Workshop came up with something extraordinary that straight forward to patent.

I think it’s far more likely that this is a distraction. It’s a distraction because if you come up with something thing that is truly useful. The thing is lots of organizations have enough money and enough Focus to come up with another version of that utility without having to pay you a penny you are very unlikely to be able to cash out your idea because you have protected it with a patent.

It is far more likely that your idea will be valuable because you have built a community because you created a network effect because you have Brand because you have traction with an audience with customers. Those are the things that companies are interested in licensing and acquiring they will tell you they need to see your patent. But that’s just a stalling maneuver a patent will slow you down a patent will cost you a lot of money now.

I might be wrong. You might be the exception you might have something a fundamental new way to deliver a pharmaceutical. Article a brand new way to do brain data interfaces. I don’t know but as somebody who has a patent or two, I can tell you that it’s cumbersome. It’s expensive and it doesn’t make a big difference customer traction makes a big difference.

Here’s one last thought on this this isn’t going to be your last idea give it away as hard and is widely as you can because if it works, You’ll make money and even if you don’t you’ll be the person who invented the thing that worked and then you’ll get a chance to invent the next thing that we can’t walk into the world of ideas holding them tight to our chest because people are busy and they have options and if you’re not going to share the creation that you’ve just made we’re not going to know about it and if we don’t know about it, it’s not going to work.

So that’s my rant. Thanks for the question. Hi Seth.

What do you think of our current copyright? Right system. The media industry has been battling digital piracy for two decades now and it’s not clear who’s winning should piracy be a crime should creators somehow take power away from the media industry so they can make more and charge less. Should there be a totally different copyright system in the future?

I have a feeling you’ll say something like well, you should be so good that your fans enjoy paying for your content, but what about the fans who simply can’t afford to do that? I’m looking forward to your thoughts.

Thanks.

Thank you for this it ties in to my previous rant. And here’s my thinking on this in a world in which there was no piracy in a world in which people couldn’t share ideas in any form the chances that someone with a new song or a new book could break through our close to zero that big copyright holders have argued and lately in Australia. The news people have argued that there. Be a lockdown intellectual property is a tricky name because it’s not like real property real property doesn’t scale only one person can have this acre of land at a time if lots and lots and lots of people come to this acre of land and all try to claim it. They’re either going to end up each with a blade of grass or there’s going to be a big fight on the other hand if everybody is listening to a Pharrell Williams song.

It’s worth more not less. The magic of intellectual property is that it is the fabric of our culture not only does he gain attention. It earns trust. It gives us permission to talk to people. We are the creator of X now we can bring them why that the history of intellectual property spreading. Show’s over and over again that the more easily it spreads the better the creators of intellectual property do that’s just a fact. Yes. There are small exceptions. It could be that you don’t have a mass Market product that you have an idea that a hundred companies need the formula of and that piracy could cost you a lot. But I’ve got a hunch that that’s not what we’re talking about this desire to sue your fans it goes way back. Back the riaa proved after spending millions and millions and millions of dollars that it doesn’t work. Not only does it eliminate piracy.

It also enrages the very people you’re hoping will care about what you do. So there’s not a lot of argument about the math here. The real question for me is who is going to build platforms that treat creators fairly and by fairly, I mean for all of us does it Make it more likely that the right creator with the right intent will make more stuff because that’s what we really need. We need another breakthrough Opera. We need another great protest song. We need another book that will change our life.

What is going to make that likely to happen? So 50 years ago Putnam perigee Random House. All of them said if you’ve got the Great American novel, we’d like to pay you money. And it created a ratchet a cultural habit of going off and writing the Great American novel and then Amazon comes along and says, well anybody who wants to can publish anything they want on the Kindle and we’re not going to pay you anything and maybe you’ll make something in royalties and so the door opens wide, but it’s not a lottery the way it used to be in the sense that you got the prize at the beginning what you got was the chance to be your own. Marketer because Amazon doesn’t care which books they sell as long as they sell something. And in one sense that led to the creation of a lot of books in the other sense. It didn’t lead to a certain kind of person writing books because there wasn’t a lottery what there was was a chance to become a marketer or if we think about the dynamic of podcasting the middle men have not yet come along that make it financially feasible for the typical person to have a podcast. That’s not why you should do it shouldn’t do it because you’re going to sell ads because you won’t should do it because the craft of talking to that smallest viable audience will enrich your life and may help other areas of your business life go forward.

So I don’t think it really helps for us to have a conversation about rewriting copyright laws because we can’t because the powerful forces that are involved will step in and make it even worse for people like you I do think it makes sense for us. To be on the alert for what sort of platforms could make it so that individual creators are inspired and motivated to create the kind of stuff that our culture needs and wants we don’t need more trolls.

We don’t need more one minute stupid YouTube videos. We do need substantial bodies of work made by committed creators who are doing it because they can because they want to that’s not a copyright problem. That’s a Middleman problem. Thanks for listening to my rant. We’ll see you all next time.

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like Have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up when you’re going to face that blank page when you going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. ‘well, it sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book.

==> -money-for-nothing- <==

Thousands of years ago if you wanted to conquer the world or at least you are part of the world you had a serious problem. How are you going to feed the soldiers? Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about money. But first here’s a message from our sponsor.

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There food is real housing is real but money is a story and if you are would be Emperor you’ve got a challenge because for every 20 or 30 soldiers you want to send on a mission you would need to send at least that many people for supplies provisions. Food and the rest but there was a solution the solution is to print some money to coin some money and to give that money to your soldiers and then your soldiers can show up in a town or a village and buy what they need.

The question then is why would a local Merchant take the money? What does it even mean to get this little coin? Well the second half of the equation is this when your soldiers are Going to territory that you control what they can point out is that locals will need those coins to pay their taxes and suddenly you’ve invented a currency you’ve invented a story that goes with the coin and the story goes like this here. Our customers customers who have coins if you can create food or lodging for these customers, you will get some of the coins you can use some of the coins to pay your Taxes and the rest of the coins they can be used to purchase things from others and suddenly quite suddenly the story of money solidifies because people come to believe that this coin is worth extending effort to get more of some people end up building many empires collecting lots and lots of coins gaining the status that they seek and according to Market Theory solving problems as they do.

I guess the best way to get coins is to identify what people want and offered to them in exchange for more coins capitalism creates a market sensing mechanism. It helps solve problems. So then we can advance to the present day. And in the present day there are plenty of challenges that go far beyond feeding the soldiers, but we can look at them through the lens of what is the government’s job when it comes to dating an economy when it comes to supporting the well-being of its people because we live under an economy that’s driven by capitalism.

Well one theory is the government should do as little as possible that the economy will take care of itself that capitalism doesn’t need any help. Thank you very much that every time the government does anything the theory goes it is hurting the economy particularly when the government spends Money runs a deficit or increases taxes because taxes the theory goes hurt everything.

Well, maybe we could look at it this way. Maybe the government is us and maybe our job when we work together is to create a situation where people are healthy where they are smart and where they are confident healthy because leaving the morality aside. Healthy workers are significantly more productive smart because if we train people from an early age to be skilled, insightful optimistic cooperative and ready to do things that work.

We’re going to end up with a more productive Workforce a more productive Workforce creates more value and that value benefits everybody in the system and the third one confident because Money is a story and if people believe that there’s going to be more and more coins in the world more and more money to get printed for no good reason. They don’t believe that collecting money today is worth a lot of effort because that money is going to be worth less tomorrow.

For example a government if it wanted to could say we’re going to make every single person in our constituency a millionaire. Print up enough money to give everybody a million dollars. Wouldn’t that be a good thing? Well, if we did that what would happen to the rent on a two-bedroom apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan?

It would go from $4,000 to $400,000 a month. Why because there’s more money chasing few rental opportunities when that gets out of balance the value of that money. It comes to what can you buy with it ends up plummeting and if we are not confident that it will stay at a given place. We start to wonder if we start to wonder it goes down in value.

This is why inflation has historically been a huge challenge because in Venezuela or in Germany after World War One if hyperinflation kicks in it’s really hard to change the story. Tori if people stop saving because their savings are going to go down in value if people stop investing because the things they’re trying to build don’t end up paying off it leads to a cycle that goes in the wrong direction this leads to our topic for today, which is modern monetary Theory.

Here’s what happened over the last 50 years some people in politics discovered two things one democratic. Elected governance often has a problem with discipline that given the temptation of giving every voter a million dollars just before the election many politicians will say sure and then you end up with Hyper inflation and the second thing that some politicians saw is that if governments start printing money and giving it out. They might give it out to people those politicians don’t want to get money because they are telling themselves a story about lack of effort or sloth a story about worth and who’s entitled and so combining these two things they invented a new story and it is the story of the balanced budget equating a government with a household saying you are household cannot keep borrowing money and borrowing money and borrowing money and hope to get out on the other side that there needs to be disciplined you need to balance. the books and so this was applied to how governments ought to be run and one byproduct of this is it gave the wealthiest people confidence confidence that things that were unexpected lots of new money printed lots of new deficits created this confidence LED them to engage in a marketplace where inflation was predictable now, we’re leaving aside the very complicated conversations that happen when there’s more than one country that can print money what happens if country a prince a lot of money, what does that do to their goods and services when they try to export or import from country B, let’s leave that out in the discussion for just a minute. And so you have a balanced budget perspective and what it says, is that our job as the government is to do as little as possible and to pay for it as we go with the taxes that we collect. There are some challenges here because as we discussed a couple minutes go it could be that the purpose of government when it comes to economic well-being is to create a population that is healthy and smart and also confident but when a pandemic hits or when Healthcare is unequally available or when schooling starts to become too expensive for many people or when we under invest in how we educate people or when the technology changes and education is unevenly available to people we have shortchanged all of us by creating a less productive Workforce.

So what modern monetary Theory argues is that printing money to pay for things like health care and education is actually fine because it doesn’t cause inflation because you haven’t handed a million dollars to every person what you’ve done is taken people who are underemployed. And made it so that they’re acting productively not by pumping too much money into the system. But by saying every doctor ought to be fully employed taking care of every patient by saying every student who can learn something at scale online should be given the ability to do that that as we create these cycles of smart and healthy what we end up with.

Is a population a Workforce that’s more confident and that will create a cycle that will lead to more productivity and productivity creates value and growth and wealth. So what are the criticisms? Well, one of the criticisms is that it will lead to Uncharted Territory that we don’t know what to do with multi trillion-dollar debt.

A bigger criticism is the government’s have no discipline and that once they start printing money. They won’t be able to stop printing money and a third criticism is that as inflation Rises and it will a little solving it with taxation will quite quickly undo 50 years of reducing taxes as a percentage on the richest part of the population.

And so the people who are looking for the government to leave the wealthy alone don’t like the idea of modern monetary Theory. Yeah, because it’s output will be to lower the gap between the rich and the poor its output will be to create a more productive economy for many many millions more people. But at the same time change the rules of the game for people of tens or hundreds of millions of dollars or more by having that population of people pay more in taxes not enough to pay for everything that the government is spending but enough to take the Fizz off. The inflationary impact so my take is that modern monetary Theory makes an enormous amount of sense.

I’m not seeing the non political objections to it. Now a minute ago. I said what happens when we talk about trading with other countries. Well, here’s what we know. They’re going to have a hard time using mmt in Europe because it’s harder for them to print their own currency because each country doesn’t control it and China China. Has its own host of problems and they are trying very hard to make their country more productive as well. It seems to me as we look for the next chapter in the development of humanity. It’s going to be about how we deal with carbon how we shift from an oil-based economy how we educate people so that they can approach new problems and find interesting Solutions and how we spread health care which includes clean water to all the Who deserve it when we seek to do all of those things?

It’s pretty clear. The market alone hasn’t solved those problems. Yes, we have raised the standard of living for just about every person on the planet. But if you are one of the people who makes four or five dollars a day, I think it’s appropriate to say not fast enough. So your mileage may vary, but I think it’s really important that we all understand the impact and Implications of modern monetary Theory because whether we like it or not, it’s going to rewire how we recover from this pandemic and how we go forward because every country around the world is going to print money and we’re going to have to figure out how does that impact and economy with the highest unemployment rate in 90 years and how do we build an economy that creates a future that were proud to have created?

Thanks for listening. Stay well. Be healthy. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with three questions from earlier episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work. I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.com.

Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

It’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth.

This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is on the Pain Scale entire sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Hey Sam, this is Rex.

Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question loyal listeners know that I love to hear from you.

If you’ve got a question about this or any other episode. I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s Aki MBO link2006, click the appropriate button three questions this week. They’re all sort of related. Here we go. Greetings from Malaysia.

My name is nizar. I have a question on analysis paralysis.

So I run my own business.

It’s a new business, but I’m seeing that there have many many problems to solve not only for my customers but for my employees and basically problems within my business to improve everything. Overall, but because there’s just so many things to solve sometimes I just get stuck and I don’t work on anything.

How would you deal with analysis paralysis? Thanks for all your work.

Thanks for this question. And you’ve already done the hard part, which is you’ve realized that there’s a challenge and the challenge is not that the world can be solved. The world is not a problem that can be solved. What is true is that there are elements of the world tiny tiny elements of the world that you can make better and perfect is the enemy of good and good is the Action that we need to head that the opportunity is to find the smallest breakthrough that you can the smallest viable breakthrough that is worth your effort and simply do that merely do that not just do that because just minimizes it simply do it without commentary and then pile on and pylon and pylon because there is never ever not once a complete solution. Ian from the beginning that’s not how technology evolves it’s not how interventions evolve instead. We find something we pull the thread we do our best and then we learn from that.

It’s an algorithm. We evolved it going forward. So when you’re feeling overwhelmed by how defective all of the elements of your solution are agree with it, it’s true. They are defective. But at least you’re going to make something better and then you get to do it again.

I says this is Zach John from Shenzhen China. I’ve been enrolled in the creatives and freelance workshop last year and they really inspire me to really start doing the work finding audience and building up this personal brand. My question is as you move on into this freelance content creation path, especially you are the Creator and the center of every video blog posts podcasts and walk shot that you put out. How do you balance and decide which kind of work should be directly handled by your yourself now by your assistant or Outsourcing because in the past few weeks, I feel pretty much overwhelmed by the amount of work I have to do to keep this side hustle running.

And by the way, I still have a full-time job. It really pushes me to doubt the initial idea of why I’m giving myself all this work instead of just chilling in enjoying life during weekends. I think there should be a system to be built in the long run and right now I just don’t know where to start. Thank you for everything you share online. I really appreciate it.

Thank you for this exact there are two parts to your question one part. You didn’t ask in one part. You did the part you didn’t ask is this. Is it a useful path to go down the list to become the influencer the social media star the personal brand because everyone who is a person has a brand in the sense that your reputation precedes you that just hearing your name.

Applies a promise but personal brand with a capital P and a capital b as something you do for a living that doesn’t feel like a strategy to me a strategy to me is who do you seek to serve are they part of a tribe? What do they believe what’s their worldview? And what are their challenges? Can you show up for that kind of person the smallest viable audience and bring them something that they need.

Maybe it’s something that has your name.

Name on it.

Maybe it’s something that has an organization’s name on it. Maybe it’s simply something fairly Anonymous like a piece of software, but we don’t begin at least I don’t begin with how do I get a microphone? Because I feel like that’s a little bit of a trap because social media rewards people who seek a spotlight in the short run but in the long run, it benefits social media. It doesn’t benefit you and the second half of your question about What do you Outsource?

It seems to me. We need to Outsource anything that someone else can do better than we can if we can afford it and we need to make sure that we don’t Outsource anything. Where are doing it with our own two hands with our own voice matters. So in my case, I made the decision that if these are words I wrote them if it’s a video I made it but there are other people plenty of other people.

You don’t have to do that. And if you look at the history of stand-up pre I don’t know Seinfeld or just before then comedians didn’t write their own jokes. Henny Youngman didn’t write his own jokes, Milton Berle didn’t write his own drugs. Phyllis Diller didn’t write her own jokes, not all of them had other people writing them.

She’s always bragging how you can eat off her kitchen floor.

You can eat off my kitchen floor mustard. Ketchup baked beans.

Because they were in the joke delivery business not in the joke writing business, but then the culture shifted and it became a singer songwriter sort of situation. So there isn’t a cut and dry answer but I think the overall strategy needs to shift to whose problem. Are you solving anyway?

Hey Seth, this is rich in Los Angeles. Thank you for all your work. You have helped me so much since I first discovered your work about a year ago, you’ve influenced and taught me more than literally I think anyone. Ever has thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My question is about dancing with the fear. I love the metaphor of dancing with it. I’ve shared this with other people and it’s blown their minds and sometimes I do believe I’ve actually danced with fear, but I don’t know how I did it and I don’t know how to replicate it in an interview. Once you said that you like to sit down with the resistance and talk with it and turn it into a compass and I’m doing that. I’m trying to do things. I’m doing things that I’m afraid of but it’s still so scary. Sometimes that it’s debilitating and I don’t know how to dance.

Dance and while I get that dancing with the fear may look signatory different for every person. Is there anyway you provide some insight on on how best to do this to be more consistent with it to make it happen. Thank you so much again for everything you do. Have a great day.

Thank you Rich for this generous question and for showing up every day as you do dancing with fear, there are two kinds of dancing. There is the Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers sort of dancing in which a choreographer and practice. Are involved that’s not the kind of dancing. I’m talking about. There’s a different kind of dancing a dancing you might find in the rain in a village with strangers.

This is the dancing of giving and taking this is the dancing in the moment that has nothing to do with perfect and nothing to do with choreography. It’s about seeing and responding seeing and reacting seeing and moving it forward. And so if we watch two great athletes competing against each other in a one-on-one One they’re doing a form of dance.

One of them is trying to stop the other one, but they are still dancing with each other. And that is what I’m talking about to dance with fear does not mean you can destroy it because you can’t does not mean you can tame it because you can’t it’s definitely doesn’t mean you can choreograph it because you can’t what it means is oh it’s going left. I can go right or I can pirouette with it. There’s something to be done here. That isn’t Referendum on my value as a human.

It’s not a crisis. It’s simply an opportunity other people might see that fear and Barrel over it and they would probably pay a price for doing that. Some people might see the fear and simply hide. But if we want to we can train ourselves to when we see the fear when we feel the fear realize it is in this moment that we get to do the things that we are proud of and yes we can dance with it because we can watch it. It from afar being present realizing that the fear is up to something and so are we and together we will create a new thing the fear and me.

Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks for the work you do. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book. Great, essay, a great idea anywhere, you know and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up when you going to face that blank page when you going to face the possibilities within you So when are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up. And that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical. But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information.

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==> -upside-down-marginal-cost- <==

If they decided to build a car the way they build a house, you know a whole bunch of crafts people come to your front yard and piece by piece as they arrive people figure out how to assemble them cutting things to fit until finally there’s a car if we built a car that way, you know, the way we build a house it would cost more than 2 million dollars to build a typical car.

Why is that because cars are built with a fact jury factories are expensive and factories are efficient. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about marginal cost and the revolution that we are living through but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Okay, that’s pretty obvious. We don’t build cars the way we build houses. We build houses in an extremely inefficient way partly because they’re really big partly because there’s a history of them all being different from one another and partly because there are systems in place that make it that building a house. In a factory is logistically and bureaucratically difficult. Okay fine, but what about all the other stuff in our lives? How much does it cost to make a can of Budweiser beer or a topic? I know a little bit more about how much does it cost to make a copy of my book The Practice?

Well, no first copy of the practice cost the publisher tens of thousands of dollars because not only did they have to type. Set it not only do they have to edit it. Not only did they have to find a printing company, but the printer has a big press that uses lots and lots and lots of paper and has no ability whatsoever to print one book at a time.

It’s a factory the first book really really expensive the last book costs about a dollar twenty to print in hardcover. That’s it that’s called. Marginal cost the marginal cost is what does it cost to make the last one not counting set up not counting overhead not counting the factory the last one just the pieces. You needed to make the last one how much did that cost?

And there’s a reason we ask this question. We asked it because one of the fundamental laws of microeconomics is that in an ideal Marketplace of which none really exist? A provider who’s got a factory should keep lowering her price bit by bit until the very last person is able to buy it at one penny above marginal cost because even if you made a penny on that last one, it was still worth it to you because that Penny can go to pay for your factory.

Now, there are reasons. This is fictional because the market talks to the market and if someone finds out that you’re buying a copy of my book for a dollar twenty-five They’re not going to be happy that they trusted the bookstore and paid eighteen or nineteen dollars for it. And so now we can start thinking about the choices that a provider makes when it comes to marginal cost.

For example, most of the books that are going to be published in the future are not going to be printed the way penguin Random House. Does it penguin random house has a business model based on scarce shelf space based on the book store based on having a sales force to goes into the world and She’s the book a lot at the beginning.

They push it a lot of the beginning for two reasons one. They’re trying to make a cultural impact and to the efficiency of the factory starts to fade. If you have to store those books for months or years into the future a comedy called lightning Source a technology called Indigo and some others came along and they figured out that it’s possible to build a huge Rube Goldberg device. It’s super complicated that takes a PDF file at one end. And and Prince exactly one copy of the book at a time.

There is no economy of scale printing one book printing 10 books printing a hundred bucks each book costs the same. There’s no fancy startup costs. You also don’t get that beautiful patina that you get from 500 years of book binding and printing experience. So someone is in the book business can tell pretty easily the difference between a print on demand book and a quote real book.

Austin is if print on demand is so great. Why doesn’t everybody do it? Well one copy out of that fancy machine costs way more than one copy out of the big old-fashioned printing process because the factory might be cheaper, but the marginal cost of each additional book is higher because it’s not as efficient at scale, but the book publishers they don’t need to Worried about scale so much anymore because there aren’t four thousand book stores that are each going to buy 10 copies of the book and put them on the cash register because there aren’t that many independent bookstores left and more and more sales are going to Amazon and a few other online retailers.

And so now you can make five books at a time and those five books at a time sit there maybe even just one until someone orders it and then you can make another one. It’s okay because you are not worried about store. You’re not worried about shredding the books that don’t sell suddenly instead of being able to keep 5,000 10,000 20,000 books in stock, which is all you could do.

When you needed to fire up the factory every time you needed more books instead of having books out of print all the time now, basically every book can be in print all the time in print in quotation marks because if someone wants one we can make one and the in Infinite shelf space of Amazon supports this now. You probably see where I’m going because it’s one thing to say a book has a marginal cost of a buck or two.

But what’s the marginal cost of Stevie Wonder’s Superstition?

It cost a fortune to make the first copy of that amazing single it. Stevie Wonder decades to be able to earn the skill and insight it took to create that song and they went into the studio and lots and lots of people worked with him to make that song and you get the idea the first copy of superstition in today’s dollars probably cost a million dollars.

How much does a copy cost if you buy it in the iTunes Store? How much does it cost be cost if you listen to it on Spotify what? Ins when we make it digital and that works for Kindle books as well is the marginal cost goes from a couple bucks to deliver it on acetate to a penny or less than a penny and in some cases.

Absolutely zero that is bandwidth costs. Keep going down as storage costs. Keep going down the marginal cost of one more person engaging with one more bit of content on the web. Rapidly approaches zero and as you know from arithmetic class when you were in fifth grade, when it danced with being actual math dividing by zero leads to really weird results dividing by 0 starts to create a sort of infinity and we could talk about zero marginal cost all day, but that’s not what I came to talk about today.

What I came to talk about today is negative marginal cost what happened if the NG you make actually works better when more people have it what happens when there’s a network effect. So let’s think of the first example that occurs to me, which is your magazine publisher in 1900 and you figure out every person who subscribes to the magazine actually makes you a prophet even if they don’t pay for their subscription because when we add the ads in you make more from the ads in each issue, Then it costs you to print and distribute that issue.

Suddenly. Not only don’t you need to charge for one more reader you’re willing to pay to get one word reader and advertisers saw what magazines were doing and they invented the ABC the audit Bureau of circulation. So that magazine Publishers wouldn’t spam the world with magazines and then charge advertisers extra to reach people who didn’t want to read the magazine so, Are tons and tons of rules like how big a prize you can get for subscribing to a magazine famously Rolling Stone flaunted the rules by offering people the first issue of the magazine if they subscribed rolling stone for a year for $8.

You got the first issue delivered by federal express and you received it the next day. So it’s pretty obvious Ian winner in the folks at Rolling Stone were losing money on every person who paid eight bucks because they were spending more than that. Plea to send you the first issue, but they understood the idea of the negative marginal cost.

But now now it’s far more widespread and that’s because in the network effect think back to the fax machine or the telephone the first person with a telephone what exactly did they do with it? Because you can’t call yourself. You’ll get a busy signal telephone works better. If your friends also have telephones and the same with fax machines, but now now that we live in the world defined.

By the network effect, it gets way more interesting because the value of the Enterprise itself and its ongoing cash flow may very well be related to the fact that they need all the people or at least all the right people to be on the network. And so when we live in a world of negative marginal cost that is defining our culture Facebook and Twitter and go down the list Clubhouse. They all need the right people in the room. Or it doesn’t work.

And so they will create all sorts of incentives for human beings to join and all sorts of incentives for human beings to not leave. They’re not doing you a favor. The marginal cost isn’t a dollar 20. The marginal cost isn’t zero marginal cost is negative. You are doing them a favor by being in the room with them because that is that the essence of their business model.

And so what that means is that in the Industrial Age our Was defined by consumers who made choices to buy things that they thought were worth more than they cost and the sellers had a price them high enough that they could make more than the marginal cost. But now our culture is a business model. It is driven by Enterprises that understand they don’t have to charge you anything. In fact, if they could they would pay you because they still come out ahead which means we’re not the customers anymore where the Product.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with answers to some questions from previous episodes. But first here is a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp an independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades, but learning together it works if you do the work. I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo Dot.

Calm go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

It’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump pricer warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is And that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or anything previous, please visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2sd click the appropriate button a bunch of questions this week to that go together, but first to get us started, here’s Jeff and Tacos.

Hi Steph, this is Jeff and Los Angeles. I was listening to your episode on Modern Choice Theory. And was rather surprised and amused to hear you use an audio clip pulled from a YouTube video. I made several years ago called ask your doctor about tacos even more surprising is the fact that I’d also just listen to your episode on trademarks and here was an immediate opportunity to find joy in the innocuous sharing of my past work.

Anyway, I have a question somewhat related to this coincidence fast forward to the present and I am now in the position of pitching comedic ideas to streaming that works in your modern choice. Episode you mentioned the decision fatigue that prevents viewers from diverging be on the front page of Netflix given that the things I create now are inherently not front-page Material.

I’m curious what tactics are factors might spur people to overcome their decision fatigue and move beyond the front page to seek out something new and unique. Thanks for your perspective your work continues to be helpful and inspiring first Jeff.

Thank you. Thank you for doing the work. I thought the ask your doctor about tacos video was hysterically funny, and I’m sure you’ve got a lot more. More than that thank you for generously putting it into the world. Let’s talk about the homepage of Netflix. Number one. Everyone doesn’t see the same home page.

Number two the purpose of the homepage for Netflix because they don’t get paid when you watch more video is to keep you from quitting Netflix that now that they’ve grown to the point where growth is going to slow. They need to stop attrition and one. They keep people from quitting is by getting them hooked on a habit and by holding out the prospect that next month. They will miss out on something if they let their subscription lapse.

So that’s one reason why the homepage of Netflix is different for different people because they need to find things that will tickle this person’s approach to genre to what they’re interested in number two Netflix does allow A lot to promote the things that are popular. Why would they do that? Well, it turns out popular things are popular because they’re popular and so seeing that a show is number one in the country or trending this week appeals to many people because they don’t want to be left behind but that’s not really the answer to your question when you are pitching something to a network like Netflix. The person you are pitching to doesn’t own the network.

They are asking themselves a simple question. If I buy this what will I tell my boss and we don’t exactly know what their instructions are. It might be that there are instructions are by stuff you like you have good taste. Let’s share it. It’s that simple that is certainly the tradition in lots of areas of publishing or it might be here is the data here is the data that shows us what keeps someone from quitting what keeps someone on the platform bring me stuff that matches. The data so part of your job as you explore what it means to sell things to these networks is to understand what’s on their agenda. What are they looking for? What are they seeking to buy today? But the last part is the most important part which is what makes a show popular on Netflix is not whether or not it is featured on the homepage.

What makes it popular is if someone sees it and tells 10 friends that they have embraced deeply embraced. the idea of word of mouth of the water cooler conversation of people binging stuff getting ahead using their status as an Insider as an early adopter to tell other people about what’s coming up that Netflix is biggest marketing expenditure is its customers its customers are the people they are feeding stuff to at Great expense so that they will tell other people and as you figured out in getting that taco Yo in front of me because you never sent it to me. Someone who sent it to me. Send it to me after someone sent it to them who sent it to them who said it to them and that’s good news for people who are making great stuff.

Hice at this is David Stein from Tucson.

I really appreciate your episode on Modern monetary theory. Mmt is something I’ve been studying speaking and writing about for over a decade first as an investment adviser and then as a financial educator and podcaster my biggest concern with mmt is the government controls how much it spends but the private sector decides almost everything else including how much output of goods and services is produced how much money is created through bank loans how big the federal budget deficit will be Based on how much the private sector wants to save versus span which in turn impacts incomes and the amount of taxes owed and most importantly whether households and businesses continue to trust the story of money inflation is as much about believe and narrative as it is about money printing if the private sector believes inflation is coming they act differently, they hoard demand higher wages and take actions that can lead to more inflation. Ation, my question is what can citizens and politicians do to help maintain trust and fiat currency in an age when so many people can’t even agree on basic facts.

Thanks Seth for all of the thought-provoking akimbo episodes.

Hi Seth.

This is James from Glendale and longtime listener and just had a comment about your episode on Modern monetary Theory and the gist I get from this.

Is it’s moving monies from private hands into will describe it as an elect essentially write a and elect who would then take that money and decide act on it in this sort of I guess Equitable Equitable way and send some way and I think that sounds great on its surface. I met my concern is that that you will end up with another sort of military industrial. Real complex situation where you just have this this self-perpetuating state apparatus that just grows and that I guess the fear I have is that you’ll end up with a population that is paying more and more for a state apparatus which essentially gives itself raises and pensions that its population increasingly doesn’t see themselves having and very libertarian.

Idea of it. But yeah, just wanted to hear your thoughts.

Thank you, David.

And thank you James. I hope it’s okay. I lightly edited your questions to get the point across but let me try to interweave the to first of all David you’re absolutely correct inflation is a challenge inflation for people who have never lived through it ends up undermining the way we interact with each other and with the economy because it changes our story about money.

And you are correct. That inflation itself is a story but it’s really important to begin with this the United States has significantly more money floating around than it did a hundred years ago that is not inflationary. And the reason is because the United States is significantly more productive than it was a hundred years ago. They go hand in hand. We have to increase the amount of money as the amount of product. DVD increases because otherwise money gets too scarce. All right with that understood then what should we do to increase productivity did it increase productivity in this country when we spent billions of dollars to build the interstate highway system did it increase productivity in this country when we spent tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to build the infrastructure for the internet.

Did it increase activity when we figured out how to map the human genome. These were all projects of Community Action. They weren’t done by Private Industry that the NASA program putting man on the moon and bringing them back safely ended up directly leading to the productivity increases and Moore’s law that is allowing you to listen to this very podcast.

So there is proof over and over again that concerted community. Action can create knowledge can create education can create possibility all of which lead to productivity and productivity is the ultimate antidote to inflation. James your point about taxation is totally worth talking about but my understanding of modern monetary theory is not that what we are talking about is a household that goes into huge amounts of debt to buy treats and prizes that a government a government that can print money is not a household and the idea of a balanced budget might be mistaken that we are not talking when we’re talking about modern monetary theory about taxing people.

Lie to pay for things so to pick an absurd example, the government could print a million dollars in ten dollar bills and then burn them there would be absolutely no net impact on the economy other than the tiny cost of printing a hundred thousand ten dollar bills that has no repercussions because he can print money. Well what happens if the government prints money and then pays people to tutor Our 6 year olds so that they can read better. What is the impact on the rest of our culture and economy when we do that? Well, when we move people from underemployment to Full Employment, we are actually planting the seeds for productivity increases when we put together a moonshot type program to come up with super efficient solar panels and windmills that lead to electricity. Being in price dramatically.

Yes, we’ve overwhelmingly shifted the productivity of the economy because if electricity is free or close to free productivity goes up. And so you see how this Cycle Works it is not appropriate to look at our government choices the way a household might look at them. They’re different things macroeconomics, which I was never good at in school is really different than mine. Microeconomics your mileage may vary you should ask an actual expert these sorts of questions, but that’s my take on it. One last question.

This one from Mike. Hi Steph, this is Mike Adams from Moorpark it what I’ve noticed about your last podcast and about your work in general is that you’re kind of a bartender of ideas and you mix a little culture little self-realization and some other secret ingredients and you have a self cocktail and your kind of a Clarity Savant I guess it’s kind of what makes you you I’m a writer working on a book and I’m struggling with Clarity and I don’t know what my big ideas or what the right Big Ideas I thought about who the book is for with the problem is you know, why my solution is different and I have a bunch of subtitles.

They most of them are okay, but but none of them are great. So what I want to ask is when you’re writing a book or working on a project and how do you get the big idea? How do you find the right subtitle that communicates the work is about and kind of keeps you on task you decide ahead of writing or ahead of the work.

Kind of let the idea take you where it will or little both and this one was asking is how do you find that kind of that clear bridge between what you want to say and what your audience needs to hear? Thanks so much. Appreciate all the work that you do.

Thanks for this Mike. Here’s my take it’s about shipping the work. It’s about pitching your idea in the elevator pitching your idea on a long walk with a stranger pitching your idea online pitching your idea with blog post saying it out loud saying it out loud and seeing if eyes light up the best way I know to write a good non-fiction book is to give a great Ted Talk first because giving an 18-minute Ted Talk is way more difficult on a minute.

Minute basis then spending six months writing a book because you only have 18 minutes.

You will get better. If you keep giving your 18-minute talk over and over again, not the same way but different ways which lines work which Cadence is work. Yes. It’s true Miles Davis made kind of blue in four days, but most spectacular works of art take a while. And the reason they take a while is not because it takes a long. Long time to type something not because it takes a long time to play something but because it takes a long time to learn to hear your own voice to figure out what other people are hearing and seeing when you do your work so my short answer is ship the work.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution, or as a success seeker at the level of of And Gathering or information distribution. I mean this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea to anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all NBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, When you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide you got to show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical. But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information.

We don’t have an environment. And we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -rightsizing-projects- <==

About 30 years ago Airbus set out to build a really big plane. How big well the stretch version would hold 900 people in economy. How big well in many airports they would have to change signage and blast protection because it was so big and heavy and yes in some airports. They have to reinforce every one way because it was so heavy.

Hey, it’s Seth. And this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about big projects and changing the world not to mention resilience and perfectionism. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor hi spend it at you and I’m here to talk to you about how you can become a better Storyteller storytelling is not an art reserved for the Chosen Few.

It’s a skill that you can learn. Just like the students have taken part in the story skills Workshop of done.

Actually.

I had a story to tell that was really important for me, but also was going to be very very important for people in the future.

It’s been absolutely life-changing for me to see stories everywhere and to see my own stories. I was surprised that the learning was as much in the giving as in the receiving we got to not only Learn about storytelling. We actually got to practice using stories in our everyday life.

If you’re ready to become a better Storyteller. I hope you’ll join us.

I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com. Go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a Ruckus. Those of you who are fans of Aviation know that in 2019 after spending more than 25 billion dollars and shipping just a Hundred planes Airbus canceled the project during that same period of time planes that seated a hundred and fifty to two hundred people did great they sold at record numbers. They were flown around the world.

So what’s going on here what’s going on here is we have to be really clear about what the appropriate size of a project is because we have been persuaded that Our job is to change the world with a very Grand gesture many people don’t want to change the world many people say I’d rather just do my job and some people some people set out to change the world in really big and dramatic ways.

But here’s the truth. Everyone changes the world every single day. Not the whole world but part of the world if you burn any carbon you’re changing the world if you have kids who are changing the world if you don’t have kids your Changing the world you change the world when you give somebody a smile or let them in front of you in line and you change the world when you cut them off we change the world when we launched a midsize project. We change the world when we cancel a project. So if you’re going to change the world you might as well change it in a way that you can be proud of so we begin with this idea of resilience.

All of us get to do projects are career is nothing but a series of Jex a project might be a job where you show up doing the same thing every day for a long time a project might be a blog post but we pick projects we pick projects we work on projects and we ship projects and having good judgment about which projects to pick is critically important because if we’re working on Project a we can’t at the same time be working on Project be the opportunity cost of what we choose to do. Is enormous in the case of Airbus for that? Same amount of money during that same period of time what could they have developed instead?

When we think about how we will choose to spend our time who in our community we will see what we will even pick as our community. These are all choices. These choices have an opportunity cost these choices contribute to the world as we hope to make it and the best way to make an Impact is not to spread our peanut butter too thin in a famous memo a senior executive at Yahoo! Sent a note to his teammates pointing out that because Yahoo! Was trying to do too many things.

They weren’t doing much of anything. They were spreading the peanut butter too thin what does this mean? It means that if you pick the right project and allocate the right resources to it. You’re way more likely to accomplish your goal and Make something the right size project. It depends on who we are seeking to change who we are seeking to reach. If you are trying to raise money for your nonprofit identifying five people who can each give you a sizable donation and overwhelming those people with the goodness with the fit with the respect with dignity with the preparation that you do. It’s going to be way more likely that they donate then if you identify five thousand people. From some list and spin the wheel and hope for the best long time ago.

I did a project with Isaac Asimov and Kodak and the idea was to take asimov’s concept of robots and turn it into a murder mystery video game not a video game like a computer game a game that was played with a home video just a video tape that you would stop and start and play some cards Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up, which made me Really happy Unfortunately, they never aired that episode.

But what we discovered is that 450,000 dollars wasn’t enough money to make a great video if we’d had that money and spent it on a board game. We probably could have delighted that people who bought board games. But Kodak had bigger dreams in that Kodak wanted to sell 20 million of these things. They wanted to and did promote it during the Olympics sell it at Kmart and Target and Walmart, however, it’s hard to spread the peanut butter that thin to belabor the food analogy ketchup did not start as a mass-market product for everybody was a condiment for a few people and then gradually over time people adopted picking the right size project one that has a Runway. Oh boy. I’ve got so many puns today.

That has a Runway that will help get us to where we seek to go which leads to the idea of resilience because what it means to have a project is that we are predicting the future. We are predicting not only that our project will work that it will resonate for the people we seek to serve to change but that the world will be the same when the project is finished and the longer it takes to bring our project to the world the more Likely it is that a block Swan event comes along the more likely it is that someone beats us to it. The more likely it is that by the time the product is done.

The world doesn’t need the product or the project the way we thought it did and so when the world changes then what do you do in the case of the Airbus A380 they thought they were being super resilient. They built one version for fancy first class Flyers, they built one version or hope to build. One version for people who are going to ship Freight people like FedEx.

They thought they had it all figured out. Unfortunately, when you discover that the airlines around the world aren’t going to line up for your very very specific elephant. It becomes a white elephant. It turns out that you can’t adjust easily because the design wasn’t particularly resilient that as Market demands changed it was too hard. Hard to change what they were building.

So this idea of resilience sits next to the idea of the right size and the third piece is perfectionism perfectionism does not mean quality perfectionism is a way of hiding perfectionism is US polishing something where people don’t care about the Polish if you’re going to launch an airplane, it is not perfectionism to make sure it will never crash that Simply one of the design specs perfectionism is trying to consider every single possible objection and answering it perfectionism means making the lists ever longer delaying the project adding to the budget not finding out what the market is actually ready to do because we erroneously believed that we never get a second chance to make a first impression. We erroneously believe that if what we ship isn’t perfect we will be shamed forever.

But when it comes time to change the world whatever we ship will not be perfect. It’s a given we can’t know if it’s perfect because we haven’t engaged with the market yet. What we can do is figure out what’s important and get what’s important correct and then ship and learn and adjust that when we bring resilience to the for what? Have is the chance to show up for the people. We are seeking to change the people. We are seeking to serve and say here I made this and then watch what happens and then evolve it one more part. And this is the idea of a portfolio stock Brokers can show you easily that a diversified stock portfolio will outperform putting all your chips all your bets on one company that what it means to have a portfolio as a A human is that you haven’t bet everything on the world matching just one prediction.

But if we’re going to have a portfolio if we’re going to be resilient if we’re putting down our bets in multiple areas, then we cannot do giant projects because we can’t go all in on one and also have the resilience to be flexible with a few. and so the purpose of the screed is to highlight the fact that we have been fooling ourselves into thinking that we have to be perfectionists and that we have to do something that will truly change the world that we can brag about instead if we are resilient if we are standing for something for some group of people, but that group might be smaller than our peers were hoping we would show up for we have an advantage and the advantages That group that smallest viable audience is a group we can earn trust with that group. If we earn their trust if we Delight them they will tell the others and so it begins to spread alert listeners will have no doubt found the paradoxes and contradictions in what we’ve just covered on one hand as bread Garlin house has pointed out don’t spread the peanut butter too thin you have to get through the dip you have to do something with focus on the Other hand we need resilience at the same time. We have to do work that matters work that we’re proud of because we’re all changing the world on the other hand. Don’t take on too big a project because you won’t have the resources to overwhelm the smallest viable audience and actually make a difference and most of all don’t be a perfectionist, but you better make it perfect because they’re not the same thing.

I believe all of these contradictions aren’t contradictions at all. They’re simply boundaries on our way to figuring out how to create leverage that what it means to have a portfolio is that we are showing up in different about multiple ways. The world could be as opposed to the brave, but perhaps lazy work of saying it has to be exactly like I am planning or nothing’s going to work we show up and we say I’ve got no clue, but at least I’ve picked five or six or Alternate Futures and this thing I’m building.

We’ve got enough alternative plans at this thing. I’m building has got a shot at working for the audience I seek to serve and the idea of our budget because we all have a budget and we all face opportunity costs and the mistake is taking on a project. That is too big In Too Short a time because when we hit the speed bump and we will we don’t have the resilience.

To Pivot that we’ve predicted. We’re going to get it exactly right the way katzenberg did with Gibby Quimby did not get it exactly right. They can blame it on the timing of their launch. But either way trying to create a cultural Touchstone that changes the way an entire generation consumes media, that’s not where you start you start by engaging with the audience over and over again your audience doing it with Focus doing work that Matters keeping resilience in mind as we go and picking an appropriate sized project so that the resources we’ve got the time we’ve got the choices we make are appropriate for the opportunity in front of us.

It all grows Drip by drip. The ocean is made of drops. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with a couple questions from a previous episode but First here is a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp an independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades, but learning together it works if you do the work. I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo Dot.

/ go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks Seth, it’s Maria.

Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth.

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My question is is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you.

If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode just visit akimbo dot link. That’s Aki MBO link2sd click the appropriate button. These two are really similar. I don’t think they coordinated.

Hi Seth paid it cookie in Melbourne Australia with a question about last week’s episode on Modern monetary Theory you said government’s job could be or maybe should be to create a situation where people are healthy smart and confident. I love this idea. I think it’s really big idea healthy and smart kind of self-evident and confident is a bit more interesting to me. You said that we need to be confident to believe the story of money, but I think it’s a much bigger idea. More than that and there’s something underneath that. So I’d love you to unpack a little bit more what you mean by having people be confident and perhaps even what governments could do to enable that more.

Hello said this is anupam from Berlin.

Thank you for your episode on Modern monetary Theory listening to it gave me more of an Insight on how monetary policy Works than doing a course on macroeconomics back in college. However, there is one aspect of it that got me thinking you mentioned how the printing of money can be justified for governments, at least the theory states that the printing of money by governments can be. Defied for three causes which is to ensure the people are healthy to ensure that they are smart and also to give them confidence what was conspicuous by its absence in this list for me was the need for government also to enable technological infrastructure and by technology. I don’t mean the technology that you reaches end users like vehicles and mobile apps, but the underlying Structure like roads and high-speed internet cables. I’d love for you to have I would love to have your thoughts on that. Thank you.

So, what did I mean by confident? What I meant is this it’s really hard to invest invest in education invest in building invest in a business. If you believe that it could all disappear tomorrow at someone’s whim or because the economy as a whole is precarious when we look at economic.

Turns a part of it is the fact that the economy hit a speed bump but a big part of it is the fact that mass psychology persuades us that things are going to get worse instead of better.

If we think about what does it mean to decide to go to school for two years or four years to go into debt to spend the money. Well, we have to be confident that when we get out there still going to be a market for that thing. We just trained in then one of the reasons people.

People can go into so much debt to get through medical school is that we have a hundred year track record of people graduating from medical school doing fine professionally and financially there doesn’t seem to be a lot of risk at the other side.

So no, we cannot D risk our economy and our culture, but what we can do is figure out how to erect a civil society that leads to an expectation of optimism and expectation that we are going to be surrounded by people who will reward us for the hard work that we are doing that one of the things that makes productivity go up is investment investment in technology investment in education investment in community and those Investments only happen in large measure if people are optimistic about what is to come and so part of the the job of Community Action is to create an environment where we feel confident about what might be happening next.

Hi Seth.

This is Carol from Washington State and I am an elected official for our County and in your last podcast you’re talking about how you know, we are the government and the government and it’s our job to create a place where people can be healthy smart and confident. And if you were to elected official I’m a curious to know what would you focus on at the local level to make that happen.

I appreciate everything you do and your thought leadership and I would love to hear your answer for this. Thank you. Thank you for this question.

And thanks for the work you’re doing in local government. It is thankless.

It is hard.

You are bearing the brunt of a lot of people’s frustration. I’m thinking about little town where I live where the mayor is. ordinary at making possibility happen and depending on the scale of the local government were talking about there are lots of things that communities can do together to create this idea of more productivity possibility and confidence as on a palm pointed out earlier building roads building high-speed infrastructure creates productivity and that productivity is one of the things that leads to forward motion now, it’s Unlikely that this local government that you are part of is going to be able to do a billion dollar infrastructure play but one of the key pieces of infrastructure is not simply being there for somebody who has an urgent need like zoning or is really angry because you confront those things all the time.

It might be something as simple as creating communication creating Circles of people who realize that people like us do things like this. Is the definition of culture and it doesn’t have to cost a lot of money but using the central authority of local government and there are things like libraries there things like spiritual institutions.

There are plenty of places government quasi governmental and non-governmental that have been the fabric of our culture what happens when we start doing this with intention what happens when we connect a tutor with the kid who needs to be tutored what happens when Amplify what’s going on at the high school and help those kids get into the community whether it’s as interns or as AIDS or as people who are giving Insight or learning from somebody else there when we weave together this sort of forward motion and possibility things get better and it could be something as simple as a phone number for someone to call when they’re hungry or lonely or when they have something to offer. It can be something like the farmers.

Get which doesn’t cost the local government money per se but it does cost effort to be able to be the impresario. The organizer the person who can say we’re going to use this space at this time to bring these sorts of people together because one thing we know about our culture is culture is by its very nature what we do together and this pandemic that we are surviving this internet. That we are living in tends to push us apart and local government because it is based on geography has a chance to bring us together.

So thanks for your work. I appreciate it. We’ll see you all next time.

Thanks.

I mean, this is the information Renee’s and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, When you got a face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

But it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an And we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -helmet-insights- <==

George Owen was pretty smart not because he went to Harvard but because as a hockey player for the Boston Bruins, he realized something about hockey two things actually in hockey, you’re skating between 20 and 30 miles an hour surrounded by other people going the same speed carrying pointed sticks and surrounded by Boards and glass and number two. People are shooting a hard rubber disc at speed. Adds up to 50 or 70 miles an hour right at your face. No George Altman defenseman for the Boston Bruins figured out something really smart.

He wore a helmet. He was the first NHL player to regularly wear a helmet while playing hockey. Hey, it’s Seth and this is a Kimbo.

We’ll be back in a minute to talk about helmets. Safety fear risk and guts but first here’s a message from our sponsor.

It’s F. And this is a podcast. It’s a podcast produced by Alex De Palma. Alex is a bit of a podcast Whisperer. Alex and I are inviting you to join us in the podcasting workshop.

And this is Alex De Palma Seth’s co-teacher and producer in this class. You’ll learn not just the technology to make a podcast because honestly, it’s pretty easy. You’ll learn to find your voice. You’ll learn to find the others and together in this proven Workshop that’s back again. You’ll discover.

That you can make a podcast not to make money because unfortunately you probably won’t but to make a difference to be heard and to find the people who want to hear from you, which is even more important.

I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com. Go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a ruckus.

After that, first season of George Cohen wearing a helmet Barney Stanley a player-coach not related to the Stanley of the Stanley Cup presented a helmet design to the Board of Governors of the NHL. It was instantly rejected. It’s worth noting that George Cohen played hockey in 1928, and it wasn’t until more than 40 years later that another Boston.

Ted green started wearing a helmet regularly 40 years went by 40 Years of concussions of head injuries of goalies like Gump Worsley not even wearing a face mask as hockey pucks were drilled right at their face. Nobody wearing a helmet in 1968. Bill Masterson was killed in a hockey game from a brain injury and suddenly 40 years later hockey players started to pay attention. Attention to the fact that they were taking really significant risks with their life by not wearing one.

So what happened almost no one wore a helmet then in 1972 something extraordinary happened a few years after Masterson’s death the Soviet Union in a sign of Detachment with North America sent over its hockey team a team of Soviet players came to Canada to play a seven-game series against Canadian All-Star.

From the NHL one thing you would have noticed even if you weren’t a hockey fan was this every single one of the players for the Soviet Union was wearing a helmet on the NHL side. There were only three or four players wearing a helmet the Vivid contrast between hard-working Brave powerful and successful hockey players all wearing helmets looking out for their own personal safety.

Paired to the Macho still great hockey players not wearing helmets who is pretty profound within seven years. The rules of the NHL had changed. My memory of the 70s. Is this that if a player was wearing a helmet they often failed to buckle the strap not buckling the strap was a way of saying to fellow players. Hey guys, my wife is making me wear the helmet, but I’m as Brave As You Are Harvard George Owen. Yes. His first name was actually Harvard and yes, he went to Harvard lived long enough to see Ted green and all the others begin to wear helmets.

And that must have been Bittersweet for him because on one hand he did the right thing playing for years and years ignoring the taunts of his fellow players preserving his health and setting an example, even though it was ignored by every other player in the entirely League often Sports analogies are insufficient to help us figure out what to do in the real world. But in this case, I think the message is pretty profound.

Why exactly does someone play hockey even today hockey players are underpaid compared to other sports like basketball and you lose your teeth, etc. Etc. Now I think playing hockey is a statement a statement about who you are who you want to be and how you are seen by the others. And they do this on television. They are making a statement about living a certain kind of life in front of a whole bunch of people but it’s their peers that they are mostly striving to be accepted by because it’s a team sport life is also a team sport and each of us is on a team. And so the questions are how are we choosing to play whatever game we are playing whether it’s investing whether it’s the way we Come to work, whether it’s how we comport ourselves in the outside world.

What does it mean to insist that your kids wear a helmet when they go sledding, even if their friends aren’t wearing a helmet when they go sledding. What does social pressure due to us as we make choices and what should industry institutions in the government do to normalize certain sorts of behavior.

It wasn’t until the NHL mandated that helmets were. required that helmets became widely worn because then the players could Grumble and say well, I don’t want to wear a helmet but they’re making me it’s worth noting that the NHL made an exception for players who were already in the league when they made the rule and plenty of veterans persisted and not wearing a helmet then they made a rule that referees had to wear a helmet and amazingly several of them refused to wear a helmet for The rest of their career but back to this idea of how it affects our culture if the government hadn’t mandated that seatbelts be required in every car.

It is really unlikely that seat belts would be in every car. It was only because they had to be there that we all had to pay for them that you could expect that seatbelt would be in your car if they were an extra cost option many people would have chosen not to install them because your car like your hockey helmet or lack thereof says a lot about who you are in America in 1968 or 1975 that when we think about the dark patterns that social media sites put in place the things that are default the things that are shown the things that are not shown many of these defaults determine whether or not we’re going to wear a helmet You’ve probably heard the story about what happens when they take a 401k a retirement plan and instead of making it opt-in where you have to voluntarily fill out a piece of paper to put your savings into a 401k.

They make it opt out giving everyone the same amount of freedom to do it or not do it. But once the pattern is in place compliance can as much as double because people while they want to fit in are also lazy And when you put those two pieces together when you establish a standard and when the easiest path is to follow the standard, then more people will follow the standard.

So think about all of the things that we do growing up going to a keg party deciding to make a choice about going to a famous college and going in debt to do so almost all of these decisions made by 17 year olds who have no business making almost any decision. Are made because people are looking around and asking what’s everyone else doing?

So freedom freedom is an interesting concept because most of us would agree that long-term decision making made by rational people who have an understanding of what it means to be in society. It’s probably something we want to let consenting adults do on their own did that level of freedom in our society?

Gives us the chance to become who we want to become but that is really different than saying to somebody. Oh you want to text while driving go ahead. It’s up to you because no it’s actually not up to you because if you’re texting while driving you might crash into me and I wasn’t texting while driving but I’m still dead.

And so when we let the phone companies put these devices into the world without doubt a simple bit of software that would have made it impossible to text while driving. We as a community made a mistake of fatal mistake a mistake that has killed hundreds of thousands of people because we mistakenly believe that people would choose to not text while driving the same way. George always had a hunch that people would choose to wear a helmet normalizing rational Behavior super important. We’d like to believe it comes from the Grassroots that if you give people the Grassroots enough chance to figure out how the world Works they’ll figure out how the world works and it will become normal.

But in fact that’s almost never the case in 2004. I wrote a blog post that I consider Turning Point on my blog because it’s one of the first posts that really sounds like me. It’s called the Provincetown helmet insight and it goes like this in 2004. I was in it’s town with my wife. We went to a wedding of a work colleague. And while we were there we decided to go for a bike ride on our way to the bike rental store. We saw plenty of people on the bike path and what I noticed an amazing coincidence, is that couples either both of them were wearing a helmet or neither of them was wearing a helmet and I thought really hard about this and I said to myself maybe it’s darwinian that people who are helmet wearers.

Attracted through the dating process to other helmet wearers and they get to Provincetown and are delighted to discover that they’re both helmet wearers. I realized this was extremely unlikely. So I figured something was happening in the bike store that was leading the decision to be made in a group.

So I put the bike store under surveillance. Well, actually I just waited in line for five minutes while we were waiting our turn and what I saw a couple after a couple is exactly the same thing would happen. The proprietor would take a credit card wheel out the bikes and then say to the couple would you like to rent helmets there are dollar each and the two people would look at each other and whoever spoke first one.

So if one person said, yes, then they both took helmets and if one person said no neither took a helmet and so the power went to the person who spoke first. It wasn’t a conversation. It wasn’t Eating it was whoever either cared the most or was simply the dominant spokesperson in the couple in that moment decided for both of them.

So the Insight the Provincetown helmet Insight is that we can change the system itself if it’s important for us as a culture for the people who pay for the ambulance and the medical bills for the people who don’t want to be surrounded by folks who are either in the cemetery or dealing with a lifelong head injury the owner of the bikes. Door perhaps prodded by their insurance company or a government regulation could say the following.

Would you like to take helmets? Everyone does their our dollar each and then put two helmets in the hands of the couple that standing at the counter now the social pressure is really profound. We’re not forcing you to wear a helmet, but what we’ve just done is made it with a helmet in your hand with your partner with a helmet in their hand if you don’t Wear helmets, you’ve got to say no and put the helmet back that is different. The presumption was that people like us we wear helmets.

Are you People Like Us in or out and that is the opportunity that we have as we try to change the culture to normalize behaviors that will benefit all of us once you see it. It’s hard to unsee it. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

My name is Kyle reading Seth.

This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump.

This is Caitlin.

Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nikki.

Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey Sun. Hi, this is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode or you just want to see the show notes, please visit a Kimbo link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2sd. Click the appropriate button three juicy questions this week on a wide variety. Of topics.

Here we go.

I said I’m Maya from Argentina and I helped create those specifically musicians encouraging them to ship their creative work into the world and find their tribes. One of the many eye-opening ideas. I’ve learned from you is the one of owning a long tail as a series of blog posts podcast episodes Etc, which goes perfectly in line with the idea of delivering creative work over a long time patiently and consistently, And I feel like I’m doing it proud of my hundreds of YouTube videos and podcast episodes.

But what I notice more and more is that people even those most connected to my work have a hard time finding what they need the more videos the more episodes. There are the harder it is to find my specific thoughts a particular concept over hours and hours of audio and video. In 101 meetings with these people for example in the some classes. I often refer them to a particular video where I know they will find what they are asking me about and their response is usually thank you. I have seen many of your videos, but I didn’t know you had this one.

So my question is are we heading towards a world where the classification the categorization of the content has a value in itself. I mean, is it a valuable work we can do investing time and energy in classifying our own content or others content as well or do we just have to go ahead expressing as many times as necessary the same ideas adding New Reflections, of course thinking that if we do it enough times, they will be found anyway, Beyond that I’m thinking that one of the advantages of twitch, for example over YouTube about live streaming for musicians is that which has a specific music from with filters by tag? Learn language Etc. So while it is impossible on a Saturday night for example to say I want to watch a Bossa Nova live streaming concert on YouTube on Twitch. It is perfectly possible. There’s an episode of a Kimble where you talk about taxonomy. And categorization and both that one and the one where you talk about curation seemed to me to be key to understanding a future where we are going to be lost in oceans of content.

But of course, I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Thank you for all your work.

Thank you for this Maya. Thanks for the work you’re doing as somebody who has populated the internet with eight thousand bits of information. That I sweated over that I cared about that. I would like to share with others. I feel your pain, but I’m not sure the problem is the one that you are describing.

The problem is actually my pain your pain not the fact that the listener the reader The Watcher can’t find what they are looking for because YouTube search and Google when it’s working properly. They can Surface something if someone knows that they are looking for it. But they probably don’t they probably haven’t read my post first 10 or the other 17 posts. I wish they would read right here right now in this moment because it’s all out there. And so what we have to do as creators is move out of the this is my one and only chance. This is my greatest hits album. This is it that mindset which is a mindset based on scarcity mindset based on promoting the thing a mindset based on.

Effect and instead realize that what we’re doing is blowing on the dandelion and the seeds will go far and wide and we have no idea where they’re going to land and most people aren’t going to read the post they need when they need it, but we have no way to give them the post they need when they need it.

So instead with Reckless generosity and abandon, we put our work out there and we hope that people bump into it and it’s okay if they don’t and it’s okay if they do. Following up on your podcast from last week.

I have a question on you mentioned Netflix and we’re talking through things there. You mentioned a big part about Netflix’s strategy is having their customers push out, you know ideas to their friends and keep the whole network effect going there in one thing. I’ve always said to my friends and I have to thank that Netflix is thought of this and I wonder why they haven’t and I’m guessing you probably know the answer. Why is why doesn’t Netflix apply a Social feature where I’m watching a show I can say at Bob my friend you need to watch this show ASAP a lot like you tag somebody on Instagram.

Why don’t they allow a friend’s feature to have that Network within the Netflix system and that would help spread the ideas and keep people on Netflix longer again. I have to think they thought of this but I’d love to hear your thoughts. Thanks again Seth by thank you for this Nick.

Yes, you’ve highlighted one of two. Items that I can’t figure out about Netflix, so I don’t have an answer but I want to highlight this problem one as you’ve just said is since most people are engaging with Netflix while they have a device in their hands that also can be logged into Netflix. Why doesn’t Netflix have an easy way for us to communicate with other people that in this moment, we are watching something or maybe there’s just a discussion board about this thing. There is a hundred ways that they could inject.

About what’s going on in front of us with people that we care about viewing parties at a distance and on and on and the second one the one I can understand and I asked Mark Randolph co-founder of Netflix about this. He doesn’t know either at the beginning it made a lot of sense for Netflix to offer binge-watching because nobody else had the guts to do that Netflix was able to say hey watch all you want. We got plenty. We’re not going to run out and that was an attraction. Action it got people to sign up for Netflix.

But now that Netflix is seeing slowing growth. They are in a different business. They’ve got to feed the beast and not run out of programming. Also if we are watching a show and we’re ahead of our friends. We can’t talk about it. That’s the opposite of what happened in 1966 when you went to school after an episode of Star Trek you had to talk about it because everyone had seen it the night before in every Revolution.

There’s one man.

The vision now, we don’t know when other people are watching so I can’t figure out why Netflix doesn’t switch back to the system that is must watch TV that everybody is going to watch the first episode of Lupin season 2 on the same day and next week when the second episode goes live.

We’ll all watch it at the same time. I can’t figure out why they’re not doing that. Hey Seth, it’s as it from Cincinnati again. I had a question about to your recent episodes curation and is Seth real the past couple years. I found as a music fan that algorithmic music recommendations have grown pretty stale for me.

But I’ve completely fallen in love with online radio through platforms like NTS and Mixcloud kind of feels like there’s a bottleneck happening with Spotify and other algorithmic playlist, and I’ve come to realize how much of a filtered experience places like Spotify are. So my question for you is what role do you see algorithms and AI playing?

Future of curation and if you want to peel the onion back a little more what role do you see AI play in the future of creative Fields like art and music.

Thanks to this Isaac. We get back to the statement People Like Us. Do things like this curation matters. And in music one of the reasons it matters is we want to listen to what our peers are listening to and so we rely on Wolfman Jack or Dick Clark or a playlist on Spotify to tell us what everybody else is listening to and I’m not sure Wolfman Jack was really the curator.

It could be. He was just taking money from whoever paid him the most was something acceptable, but the fact remains We look to the curator in certain pop culture places simply because we all want to agree on what we’re doing, which means that it’s okay if an AI picks it but there are other areas where we are interested in being more Discerning being more unique being more idiosyncratic and in those areas, I think human beings are going to be in the Forefront for a little while longer because the quirkiness that a human being can bring to certain kinds of selection.

Still outperforms most AI I know that a book recommendation from a friend almost always outperforms one from Amazon. That doesn’t mean a I won’t keep getting better. It will but I just want to reiterate that the core idea of curation and pop culture is that we are all looking to the same curator. Thank you all for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself. As an educational institution or as a success seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all NBA gets right is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good you got access to Two ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical.

Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -advertising-built-the-world- <==

I forgot to take the Trix Trix are for kids.

Hello, I’d like to ask a few questions about this breakfast cereal. I yeah box of Tricks. That’s right. I’ve been led to understand that Trix are exclusively for children. Is that correct? Well, I mean they say Trix are for kids in the commercials. Huh?

And is that enforced by law not to my knowledge? No, so if I purchase these Trix He’ll be no trouble. No now he should be fine. You do understand that I myself am not a child. I was able to sniff that out. Yeah, okay. I’m going to bring these back to my apartment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so be okay, I won’t be followed.

I know that’s that’s not in our budget here.

And now a word from our how long words our words our sponsors look around you and imagine for a second that we lived in a world in a culture where labels simply said what was inside the container where there was only one approved choice in every category where there were no Billboards. No pop-ups. No pop-unders. No spam no interruptions. No salespeople. No TV ads no magazine ads. No jingle. Snow radio ads and in fact, the only way you ever found out about anything was if you heard about it from someone you knew and trusted.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second ironically enough after this message from our sponsor itself and And this is a podcast. It’s a podcast produced by Alex De Palma. Alex is a bit of a podcast Whisperer. Alex and I are inviting you to join us in the podcasting workshop.

Not to make money because unfortunately you probably won’t but to make a difference to be heard and to find the people who want to hear from you, which is even more important.

I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com. Go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a ruckus.

I got this question the other day about my take on Advertising my question today is about ads and advertising and I know you’ve talked a lot in the past about almost their rudeness of interrupting people while they’re listening to content to deliver them an ad and I can’t help but notice that you have your own ads and have had ads for other people and companies in the past on akimbo and this isn’t something that bothers me.

I’m just curious about how you You think about that when you are inserting ads into your own content? I don’t think that your audience probably Minds as I think most of us are probably highly interested in the akimbo workshops or other companies that you promote but I’m just curious about how you think about that decision to include ads in your content when you’ve had some kind of differing opinions about them elsewhere.

Thanks for everything. You do big fan of your work.

See ya.

I thought it was worth. Turning it into an entire episode because I’m not against advertising advertising. In fact has contributed an enormous amount to my well-being to the culture around us to my Narrative of how I encounter. The world. Advertising is The Unsung contributor to the last hundred and fifty years of the rise of Western culture without advertising our world feels sort of orwellian not orwellian in Sense of the government runs everything but orwellian in the sense that it’s gray and drab and generic in order to understand the impact of advertising and why it has so completely jumped the shark and become a negative Force for many people.

I want to examine four elements of it. But first I want to start with the following for 50 years, maybe more advertising was an incredible bargain. It was dramatically underpriced why Would it be under priced? Well, the reason is that the media companies had sold at were nervous. They were nervous because they had a great deal.

They were getting paid a whole bunch of money to run ads enough that they were making plenty of profit, but they were worried that if they raised their rates too much so that it was fairly priced so that it was appropriate to the value that the people who buying the ads were getting that people would switch to other media sources and the gig would be up and so the logic of the 1940s through the 90s was pretty simple by a mall by all the ads you can tv ads in particular tv ads built giant corporations tv ads changed the culture tv ads got us to stop killing each other because we all lived in a world where we were all watching the same TV ads and along the way of running all those ads to people who ran the ads who were probably very good intuitive storytellers, but weren’t particularly good at analyzing what they were doing came across four rules of thumb these four rules of thumb enter played with one another some were adopted more than others. Here we go.

The first one is that advertising could be more targeted. I don’t think it’s right for kids to grow up thinking these things that just Mom does everything if you wanted to sell Tide laundry detergent the sexes thinking what you should advertise it in the afternoon on soap operas because it’s women who decide which soap to buy and that’s how you reach Housewives a term pretty much invented by people who ran ads number two is measured now for a really long time advertisers pretended to measure their ads, but they didn’t really want to back when I was pioneering email marketing in the 90s we would go on sales calls and the people we were pitching to would say what yeah, but how do you measure that?

And I’d say well how do you measure your TV ads and they would look at me sort of funny because they didn’t want anyone to know that they didn’t really measure their TV ads when I was at Yahoo in 1999. The homepage the center of the internet was sold out. It was sold out for months in advance and if you ran a banner ad on that homepage You are identifiers report of click-through rates and almost everyone who ran that at never opened the report because these were people who were experimenting coming over with TV sighs money to try out this new internet thing and they didn’t want to know whether people clicked or not because if they knew they’d know they weren’t doing that well because there were the numbers and they’d have to tell their boss know it was better to not measure and most of the people who bought tv ads were. Buying tv ads because their boss before them had bought tv ads and you weren’t going to go to your boss and say you were an idiot in the old days for not measuring I’m walking away from tv ads. It was more fun and more lucrative to not measure but measurement people had a hunch that measurement mattered the third thing after targeted and measured was frequent seems to rub a lot of marketers the wrong way that they have to say what they have to say more than once.

They said it isn’t that sufficient, but what we No, is that frequency Works writing the same add more than once pays off its scales and the fourth one was blur now.

It says that I’m supposed to have a trade with soup and bless your sweet handsome man you This is supposed to be a slim graceful Vaz of flowers.

It looks pretty short and fat and dumpy.

But anyhow, you get the idea spraying April in Paris.

May in the Bronx And a bowl of soup and you all the way back to the days of Arthur Godfrey advertisers figured out that the closer they could get to looking like an endorsement the better the ad would work that their goal was not for the ad to be separate from the content. And so the Reese’s Corporation paying a bunch of money to be the candy of choice for et.

The Extra-Terrestrial. I don’t think Stephens Oberg picked Reese’s Pieces because he liked him better than M&Ms. I think he picked him because someone paid him and so in certain forms of media, there was a bright dividing line between what’s an ad and what’s not the people at CBS News were insistent that it didn’t matter who the sponsor was. In fact being a sponsor probably made it more likely they were going to say something nasty about you just to prove that there was no blur.

Okay. So what happened? What happens is Along Comes the internet Net and when the internet shows up, it increases the number of ads each person sees per day by a factor of a hundred that instead of seeing five or six TV commercials in half an hour of TV, you might see five hundred messages if you surfed the web for half an hour, but then Bill gross figured something out and Google ran with it and what it was was an auction that instead of The Upfront. Instead of conservative media companies just selling the ads and saying enough is enough Google figured out how to take it all Take It All by auctioning it off 30 seconds from now, we’re going to show an ad to some people who look for a certain keyword who wants to bid the most.

Can you see how all four of these things come together at once targeted measured frequent and the blur all come together on the internet at once. And the auction the auction solves the problem that media companies had of it’s all too cheap because if you are measuring and you discover that a click to your site is worth a dollar and there are lots of ways to discover that if you use direct marketing math you if you’re a rational actor should be willing to pay 99 Cents for it.

In fact, it’s not completely irrational to pay a dollar. A penny just to keep your competitor from getting that click. Well, if you’re paying Google 99 Cents, that means that they’re the ultimate landlord because of that dollar of profit that dollar profit that shows up because you worked so hard to look so many risks built something of value of that dollar Google gets 99 Cents and you you make a penny repeat that a billion times a day.

Or more and now you understand the engine that propelled Google to become the powerful Monopoly that it is Facebook looked at this and said, wow, we can create a ton of new inventory because instead of organizing the world’s information. We can organize the world’s people. And so there’s all this inventory. Let’s auction it off but in my experience anyway Facebook cheats, their auction is fake you buy a thousand dollars worth of ads. And if they’re working and you go to buy $3,000 more suddenly the price per click goes to the roof because somebody figured out that goosing. The algorithm is as good as having a fair auction, maybe even better continuing on my rant. So now what we see is that you can Target that the internet is micro media its micro media because there is no home page of Yahoo anymore.

It’s micro media because you cannot effectively reach 40 or 80 million people with one add the way you could as a matter, of course just 30 years ago. It’s measured because it’s digital because the reports are there because you can find out to the nanosecond exactly what’s happening. In fact, most of the Privacy violations that are going on are going on because of the insatiable desire that marketers have developed to know the math.

So you my alert listener is probably ahead of me in a few. Is but here we go. First of all, if you’re not Google and you’re not Facebook, but you have a little Media company on the internet, you’re an Instagram influencer. You’re trying to build a following for your blog and run ads on it. You’re even one of those smaller media companies.

You’ve got a big problem. You got a bunch of big problems. The first one is this marketers are racing to the bottom if the auction is going on and it is not controlled by a central Authority. They are algorithm is going to do. Everything it can to pay as little as possible. And if you don’t have an ad for that person who’s visiting your site tomorrow or 2 minutes from now or right this second it goes unsold and so because they have choices there’s an advantage for them and the race to the bottom continues. Well one way around it is to do the blur to sell out and so we have countless pages on Facebook that appear to be by real people but are instead. Nothing, but Schilling for a company or a political actor and we have people who claim to be influencers who are pitching stuff that they’re getting paid to pitch.

The next problem is what happens with podcasts because podcast don’t have a lot of data that for a really long time thanks to RSS. There was a disconnect between the person making the podcast and the audience in the sense that that it wasn’t a direct connection you subscribed in your RSS reader, but that didn’t provide a lot to the podcaster about who you were and what you did and advertisers given the choice wanted to know so when I set out to build the akimbo podcast I was open and excited to have ads a cuz I like ADS-B because I want to be able to compensate the people I’m working with and see because real media products often have real ads.

But I made a whole bunch of rules. Those rules would prevent a race to the bottom. We had really standard pricing. We insisted on frequency showing up again. And again, we didn’t want to share any data about our listeners and most of all I refused to blur I wouldn’t read the ads because it’s not my company. I’m not sure what they make and I didn’t start that company and so season after season as I had control I was Icky about who could sponsor this podcast and who couldn’t and eventually it became clear that advertisers with a choice.

We’re ignoring the fact that context matters. They were ignoring the fact that you my listeners are a very special Bunch listening with a special sort of attention and they were just going for tonnage back to the numbers back for buying it in bulk all the way for the media planner to hit the numbers and so we reached a point where I made it. Vision and the decision was if it’s that good I should advertise on it myself and that is why you will hear ads for the akimbo workshops because who better to talk to these workshops about than the people I made them for and who better to talk about them.

Then me the summary of my argument. Is this advertising for at least 50 years 1942 1990 was a peculiar institution. It had Surplus Surplus. All around there was a limited number of people selling the advertising and there was plenty of money to create magazines and television shows and radio that people were eager to listen to at the same time advertisers weren’t paying as much as they had to so they had enough profit that they could take their time that they could build a brand for the ages that they could try not to cut as many corners and the internet has taken both of those things and turn them upside down.

There’s an infinite number of voices chasing a finite number of advertisers and thanks to the auction system. The amount of money The Advertiser makes from each ad is really small particularly in the long run once an ad starts working people copy it and they copy that product as well. The end result is in some ways a race to the bottom a race for clicks a race for attention arrays for the providers of goods and services to cut Corners to fit. Figure out a way to go a little faster and be a little cheaper so they can keep playing the ad game.

And yes while it has increased dramatically by orders of magnitude the number of voices and the number of choices. There are costs to the end of this era of advertising and too often people who want to make a thing online a show a podcast blog end up being disappointed about the flow of Revenue that they get when they try to sell the Mention of their fans.

So yeah, I’m blurring on purpose because I’m proud of it, but you are right that in the world of the Internet advertising has shifted probably forever. It is now hyper targeted micro-targeted. It is now delivered with obsessive frequency as it chases you around the web and most of all most debilitating to our culture is the blur is here and it’s real.

There was very little blur in the days of network TV more in the days of cable TV, but now you never really know and it’s Fred Wilson says no conflict no interest and there’s something to be said about that, but it only makes sense. If you know what it is. If you know who’s behind it. If you know how they decided to say what they’re saying so long rant rant brought to you by our sponsor.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.com go to find out about there. You upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks. It’s Maria.

Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth.

This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump. This is Caitlin. Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, please visit akimbo link. That’s a Ki M Bo link2006.

Click the appropriate buttons to Juicy questions this week.

Here we go.

Hey Seth, Chris from Nashville, Tennessee here.

Love your work.

I really enjoy your interest in placebos.

You’ve done a great job of documenting the upsides of the placebo effect. What do you make of the way that the placebo effect is employed by the cosmetics and wellness Industries to profitably address the very illusory needs that their marketing sometimes is so good at creating and people wear before their marketing. Showed up perhaps there wasn’t a fault need of your work.

Thanks Seth. I need a little bit of a wind up before I answer this. So I’m going to begin with two things. First of all marketing Works marketing has an enormous amount of Leverage and power showing up in a way that takes people’s attention tells them a story that spreads that changes our culture. It works. If it didn’t work those people who are spending their lives and billions of dollars on it are wasting their time but they’re not we know that well marketed things do better then poorly marketed things and the second is my assertion that the job of our culture is not to enable capitalism that capitalism is permitted to enable our culture and so just because you’re making money doing something doesn’t mean you’re doing a good thing and I think a community which is nothing but a bunch of people working together for Community has an obligation To determine what’s good? What’s not and to enable or disable capitalists from playing certain kinds of games?

So with all that said let me divide placebos Pharmaceuticals nutraceuticals supplements into three categories positive benign and malignant. So we’ll start with positive when a marketer shows up and helps people see that a clean water filter is better than drinking. Dirty water which makes your family sick that is positive when a company like Freedom mom shows up and offers goods and advertising that normalizes and encourages women to have honest conversations about living postpartum about taking care of themselves about doing it without shame doing it with Comfort. They are doing something that is positive when we bring soap to the world and encourage people to watch. Their hands were doing something positive. There are lots of things that come from Marketing in this space and for the last hundred and fifty years the world has gotten much much cleaner and safer largely as a result of a cycle of capitalism in which people are making money helping other people live a safer cleaner and healthier life and then there are things that perhaps we could call neutral.

These are bows that are sold to people in the following way a message goes out and add a story that makes you feel a little bit insecure a little bit behind a little bit nervous. Do you have halitosis a made-up word for bad breath. Oh, well this product which isn’t very expensive and has no side effects will make that problem go away and it’s a hobby for a lot of Have lustrous hair to have shiny skin or whatever the opposite of shiny skin is to look good and feel good.

But the definition of look good is coming from the marketers themselves where this ends up being malignant is when shame is added to the equation when there are side effects when the placebos that are being sold are really expensive when they are addictive when they cause side effects. That weren’t promise. Just when all of those things happen, it’s simply a taking.

It’s not a hobby. It’s not a sport. It’s not fun. It is not weaving together Beauty and culture. No, it’s simply a taking it is a taking of trust. It is amplifying shame. It is causing things to spiral in the wrong direction so you can think really hard about what it is. You want to Market and how you want to Market it. I’ve got no problem at all if a company wants To sell a beverage by helping people believe they’ll be more popular or have more fun than if they buy the alternative the competitor. I think that’s fairly benign. We live in a shiny Market Place filled with marketers all of whom are offering us some sort of meaning by spending money and that’s deeply ingrained and it’s not going away anytime soon.

But as Peter Parker’s Uncle might have said with that great.

Power comes great responsibility. Thanks for this one. Hi Seth. This is Wendy from Eureka Springs, Arkansas. And I’m thinking about your last episode on helmets text and seatbelt laws and your observation of the person at the bike shop who spoke first that had the power over if the couple wore the helmet or not yesterday our governor lifted The Mask mandate while the cdc’s still highly recommends wearing masks. Well, I’m not looking to you for your opinion on masks in the vein of people like us do things like this and the person who speaks first has the power.

I’m curious how you would approach business in a service industry caught between those who shun businesses that require mask and those who shun businesses that let patrons to choose to wear a mask. I look forward to your answer. And as always keep making a Ruckus 25 years ago.

There was a school on the route between my home and the train station and one time I was driving to the train station at 7:15 in the morning 45 minutes before school opened driving through the 15 mile an hour school zone at 30 miles an hour and I got a ticket and I went to the judge and I said, I don’t deserve a ticket because school wasn’t open and the judge said the school zones. It’s Evan and I said but I’ve never been in an accident and I’m a safe driver and the judge said we’ve agreed on the law and the school zone speed limit is 15 miles an hour.

And so I paid the ticket and I deserved to get the ticket because as a culture as a community, I think we’ve all done the math and come to the conclusion that slowing down 15 miles an hour for a couple hours a day in exchange for not mowing down kids. Who might be running into the street is a fair trade and the thing about a trade like that is everyone needs to do it. If you’ve got one person who says I can drive any speed I want it’s my right. I’m not hurting anyone but me and I’ve never been in an accident then the whole system goes out the window because then everyone has to fend for themselves.

Now. The thing about political conversations is this The good kind of politics are when people who mean well who want to make things better disagree about the best way to accomplish something and that opens the door for a conversation about the best way to accomplish something but when we weaponize politics when we make it about identity when it’s us against them, we’ve also stated were not allowed to talk about it.

Not even allowed to talk about what we’re talking about because to do so is to come too close to that thing of who are you are you with us or are you against us and often in our culture in which belief and science keep bumping up against each other? We’re not even sure what we’re talking about when we’re talking to each other are there are theories and conjectures in mathematics that are not settled yet. Of course, there are two mathematicians talk to each Each other about them all the time. In fact, that’s all mathematicians do is have constructive conversations about the solutions to problems when Ignacio semmelweis figured out that if doctors wash their hands women Wouldn’t Die in childbirth.

It ended up turning for 20 years into a sort of political third rail conversation. You weren’t allowed to talk about some of Isis data because people were so busy talking. Talking about their identity instead. And so now your question because as a culture we have a challenge there is no debate among epidemiologists that lives are saved when viruses don’t spread that the spread of viruses enables them to get from one person to another and it has killed more than half a million people in my country alone.

That is not up for debate. What is an interesting? Conversation to have is how much are we willing to pay in inconvenience in a lack of freedom in money in a slower economy to keep a virus from spreading to more people that is a useful conversation. There’s a long history of regulations in the United States in which a number around two million dollars is spent to avoid each death. For example Banning a certain chemical. Well, it might The industry a hundred million dollars, but it’s going to save 50 lives.

That’s how the math usually works out around 2 million dollars. Well, if you multiply two million dollars times half a million people. It’s a really big number and now we can have a conversation. We can have a conversation of how inconvenient expensive or debilitating is it for people to wear masks in our community versus how many people are Aren’t going to get sick. How many people aren’t going to face long-term Health consequences. How many people aren’t going to die.

If we all wear a mask that conversation needs to be held just like we had a conversation about speed limits because speed limits accepted by our culture in every country that I’m aware of exist because all of us come out ahead we come out ahead on pollution. We come out ahead on safety. We come out ahead.

an efficiency if we have speed limits, and so now we have to be together enough to have a conversation about whether or not walking into your business or any other business should require somebody to wear a mask and the interesting thing about the mask conversation, which is fundamentally different than the motorcycle helmet conversation is this if you don’t wear a motorcycle helmet the person who’s going to get killed as you you but if you don’t wear a mask the person you’re endangering is someone else and I think like the speed limit in the school zone that changes the bias of the conversation.

It changes the metrics that we need to consider about who’s paying the price and who’s benefiting and so yes, these conversations need to be had and the reason that it’s so problematic besides the enormous division that our country is going through Amplified and If I’d Amplified by the media is that we have to do it all over the place because the virus doesn’t care. If most of the time you’re wearing a mask. It doesn’t say. Oh, well, they really did a good job. I’ll ignore this moment now it’s on duty all the time.

And so yes, I think you understand my answer just like my answer regarding Pharmaceuticals, which is we have an obligation to do something for all of Of us for the culture and if that means that some customers will choose not to buy from you. I think that’s a spot you can proudly stand in that. I’m not going to run any live events for a long time to come because I don’t want to be the person that encouraged a lot of people to get together in a room.

And yes running a business feeding your family. That’s your job. But at the same time we live in community and I think we all have to decide what are the rules. For living in community because you don’t have to live in community. You can go move to the woods of Wyoming. But for the rest of us, there is a price and a benefit from being together in community and its purpose is not to enable the most people to make the most money its purpose is to create a culture where opportunity and possibility lead to a better tomorrow.

That was a rant.

Thanks for your question. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

When are you going to face those fears? I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason why We don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know or we don’t have the information.

We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network that makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories.

I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -turning-the-ratchet- <==

In 1923 the Snap-on Corporation got a patent patent number 144 an early pioneering ratchet wrench. What’s a ratchet wrench? It’s something that when you turn it One Direction, you can apply force and make something go forward and it can’t go backwards. And so the ratchet only turns in One Direction and as metaphors go a patent in 1923 for an industrial ratchet is a really good one.

Hey, it’s Seth. And this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about the measures of capitalism. But first ironically enough, here’s a message from our sponsor get better clients there in three words is the strategy of any freelancer who wants to do better work get better clients. You can’t work more hours, but you can work for people who appreciate the work you want to do.

They will push you harder. You will do better work. They will talk about you. You will get paid more. You will be more proud of what you produce how to get better clients. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and we have built a workshop just for you if you work for yourself, I really think you need to check it out. It’s not a bunch of videos It’s a workshop you will work with. Other Freelancers working your way forward to figure out how to do this work that matters.

I hope you’ll take a minute to check it out. Visit akimbo.com. Go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a Ruckus throughout the eighteen hundreds and the nineteen hundreds. And even today capitalism has been the force that changed the world capitalism a very simple idea of Finding a market finding a need selling something for less than it’s worth to the person who’s buying it repeating the process over and over again is in many ways our ratchet. It’s a ratchet because if there are three products and someone wants to grow market share someone wants to build something they have to make something that’s better than the existing options better in some way then the existing options because if they don’t no one will buy it and so the argument for unbridled capitalism is very straightforward. It seeks to solve problems you get rewarded when it solves problems and if it’s not solving your problem, then you can move on and capitalists need to keep score and this is where the ratchet comes in because once you start building a business, if you are measuring return return on investment return on sales, you will try to make that number go up if you need to issue stock raise money from a bank.

Find an investor the investor will choose to invest in the best possible investment. And so if the standard of a return on investment is 6% and another company figures out how to get 8% the ratchet turns because the people who are getting six percent aren’t going to get any more investment because the Investments going to go to the 8% person and so the ratchet turns and during the eighteen hundreds. It was a free-for-all.

We still remember names like a stir. A and Carnegie and melon and JP Morgan and John D Rockefeller and Leland Stanford. These folks were robber barons like so many juicy terms. It comes from a German phrase robber barons in Germany would capture a piece of land and then charge Travelers atoll in the illegal toll to go through the place that they were patrolling and the pejorative Robber Baron described monopolists who were racking up things in railroads or Finance or Even in the case of John Warren gates in barbed wire and figured out ways to charge a premium to figure out how to manipulate the market to figure out how not to be capitalists at all.

But simply to turn the ratchet one more time here is the thing. It’s easy to be lazy when you think about winning at capitalism lazy because there’s only one number to measure what’s the return If I put money into this, how much do I get back? If I build this business? How much do I make one number anything? We do as humans where there’s just one number people will come up with ways to make that number go up.

And so that idea has spread and been built deep into the bones of capitalism. You want to make a social networking app. How many signups did you get? You want to launch a new kind of pesticide? What is the yield per acre one number? And you’ve probably guessed one number gets us into lots of trouble. It gets us into lots of trouble because people like Mark Hopkins who were running railroads or William Randolph Hearst who is running the media said quite proudly. I am making my number go up.

What’s the problem? Well in one respect the problem is that one number forgets the factor of time. Are you making more money today or are you making more money in the The long run and so apologists for Milton Friedman’s Maxim that the only job of a corporation is to enrich its shareholders is to say well what they mean is in the long run and so you can’t enrich your shareholders by doing nothing but a short-term hustle because in the long run you’ll lose.

I don’t think that goes nearly far enough because what that number leaves out is so many things what about externalities, what about the scraps that we dumped into the river? What about the toll on? People who work in the organization. What about the way culture can be manipulated to change how people engage with one another simply because you’re trying to make your number go up.

What about the injustices created or perpetrated in the name of making a number go up Suddenly It’s complicated. It’s complicated because with more than one number with nine numbers or 18 numbers when we are measuring the well-being not not just of customers but of bystanders when we are measuring not just how did your product make things better? But what happened to it when it went into the refuse stream when we are talking about things like how much carbon did it take to make and how much does it take to use when we talk about who was left out what divisions were created by what you did suddenly it’s really complicated and at the same time there’s still a ratchet.

There’s still a ratchet on Wall Street. There’s still a ratchet of You have to justify the fact that you were looking at dozens of factors. When you are talking to the business, press and your investors and your board because they would prefer to do the easy thing. The thing that makes it easy to feel like a hero easy to feel successful. I made that number go up if that number how much did you make as a return on investment is the only symptom of whether you are being useful. To society.

It’s way easier to go to work with your head held high the alternative is to realize that there is no singular hero that there is no perfect model that there is a messy series of choices. We have to make if we are going to be in the business of changing the culture of changing the market of changing people’s lives.

And so the easy thing to do is stay home and do nothing the easy thing to do is abdicate to let other People do something and then blame them when it doesn’t match your agenda. The alternative is to figure out for the smallest viable audience for a group of people for an institution that you can influence or create.

What are my metrics and how am I going to scale that to make the change? I want to make in a way that I am proud of and it’s messy and it’s complicated and no one knows the right answer. Is it okay? To come up with crop rotation because crop rotation leads to more yield in your farm. If you get more yield in your farm more people will eat but there are trade-offs because it starts down the path of industrializing Agriculture.

Is it okay to use bees to pollinate your avocado trees while on one hand that creates a use for B’s which makes it more likely because humans care about what they can use that to We will care about them and the other hand it can endanger all the bee populations and if we do that that’s not fair to them or to us.

When we think about how we are going to be in the world. There are so many choices to be made if we are serving one group. Are we making another group field deliberately left out. If we are selling status does that status? We sell come at the expense of making other people feel excluded what happens if we To build an institution that confers something scarce on people.

Does that scarcity create value? Does it create it for everyone or just some people is it? Okay that only some people can write prescriptions or should everyone be able to write a prescription? How do we manage that scarcity as well? So as you’ve probably guessed there are way more questions here than answers but what’s important is to see that just because there’s a ratchet and just because it’s easy to measure.

Doesn’t mean that’s your job that Capital seeking higher returns is what capital does but that doesn’t mean it’s our job to play that single metric game what we have instead is a chance to decide. What would make us proud. What change do we actually seek to make in the world? And how can we do it in a way that makes a difference everything has side effects. We call them side effects because we believe that there’s Only one number that matters the ratchet but they’re not side effects. They’re simply affects everything has effects if we come up with a really delicious soft drink and a great ad campaign to go with it will sell more bottles of it. If we sell more bottles of it more people will get diabetes. We saw more bottles of it more bottles will be in the environment.

If we don’t come up with something that people want will someone else will the people who work with us who depend on us? Be out of a job. And then what will they eat or consider something else? Something less obvious? What about inventing the light bulb while inventing the light bulb has effects. It has a fax because you can build entire Industries around the idea that we can get way more done and increase our comfort and satisfaction of Life by not being in the dark all night, but it has effects like we have to build dams. We have to have Coal Fired power plants we didn’t have Hundred forty years ago and easy efficient cost free way to make Power.

Well, what about LED lights LED lights are way better than incandescent bulbs better light more efficient. They last longer they use far less electricity, but they have effects who created them. How were they created? What are the human costs and environmental costs of making them? So let’s goes on and on there are effects everything. We do everything we don’t do.

As an effect. It was so much easier to be a lazy capitalist and say I got only one number please measure me on that one number. I don’t have to worry about anything else, but we’re not lazy capitalist where humans and what that means is we need to measure a complicated set of trade-offs only one of which is easy to measure the rest involve time and you Manatee and culture and the people around us.

So I wish I had a map for you. I don’t I’m not even sure I can share a compass but I do know we’re not asking the question often enough that we shouldn’t be justifying whatever we’re doing based on one number. We should figure out what competes with what and what hard decisions were going to make about this instead of that because we live in a world of opportunity and opportunity means opportunity cost because every time we do something we’re not doing something else and so In these times this upheaval. This upside down world we live in one thing we can do is think really hard about how we can become agents of Change by building something and pointing to what we built and figure out how to make something better.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with a question from a previous episode. But first here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at akimbo are up to visit akimbo.com go to find out about their new. Upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks.

It’s Maria. Hey Seth. My name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump.

This is Caitlin. Hi, sir. Warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They said this is Rex Hey, sir. Hi, this is Russell is from Chris. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is and that completes my question. As you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode or just about anything else that’s relevant to listeners. I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link-16. Click the appropriate button a good one from Gwen this week with many layers to it. Here we go.

Hi Seth, this is Gwen and I am a food photographer working in Los Angeles. I have been wanting to connect. Community around food photography and after hearing your Zoom Revolution episode, I finally decided to gather the others and build it the response was humbling and I now have a committed group who get together monthly to discuss our industry share best practices and encourage each other.

It’s been transformative and was probably the best thing I’ve done for my own sanity, but also allowed me to build something really special and find my others at a time when we all needed it my questions about what to do next the group and the conversations have been incredibly helpful. But I find myself wanting to build something bigger or better.

I want the group to have a bigger impact in the field of food photography both for the participants in the group and for the clients that we serve. I find myself forced to limit the number of attendees because I don’t have time to run my own business and administer the group which I put a lot of time and effort into to ensure the attendees are prepared and feel seen and heard.

I know this is selfish, but my time is limited and this doesn’t pay the bills. I’m also committed to not making money off the people that are in the group. Because I feel that the people who are in the early stages of their careers are easy targets for online Educators and coaches which they’re becoming more and more of but paid coaching and online education is not how I want to contribute to the world of food photography.

I know that the people in the group already feel like they’re getting a benefit but I can’t help but feel like there must be a way to leverage this kind of special focused Community to build something bigger. I’d like all my effort to have a bigger impact in people’s lives whether those people are the participants.

Serpents in the group or the clients that we serve any ideas or Frameworks to think about this problem would be much appreciated. Thanks so much.

Thank you Gwen this ties in to a lot of the things. I’ve been thinking about and writing about lately. You are a community organizer. You’re in impresario. You’re a freelancer and you’re a bootstrapper all-in-one. Let’s take these one by one and figure out how it helps you and others go forward. And yes, thank you. Thank you for leading and connecting and helping people in your community of choice. Choice get to where they’re going.

So I’ll start with this community organizer. It’s a more important job than ever before because people feel dislocated because people want to be with people like them on a similar Journey enrolled in where they are going and it used to be a community organizer was Geographic in their focus, but now it can be as in your case professional.

So you discovered that there is a community just Waiting to be organized that doesn’t mean you have to do it for a living but it does mean you probably could and you are right that there are people who will take advantage of just about anyone if they can but that doesn’t mean that you can’t show up for a community and charge them fairly for their ability to belong for the value that they will create. That doesn’t mean you need to do it want to do it, but you could I don’t think it’s immoral. What to say to this group of people for a hundred dollars a month. This is what you’re going to get and they can choose to get it or not.

But you’re also a bootstrapper in that you are starting to build a business not by going to the bank or a venture capitalist, but by finding a way to get your client your partner’s your community to pay for what you’re creating before you have to incur the expense of creating it. This is a marvelous opportunity to build something bigger than yourself.

And yes, you’re a freelancer and the Freelancers Workshop is rolling up. Just this week a freelancer is somebody who gets paid when they work. I’m a freelancer most days if you hear my voice, it’s because I’m talking if you read my words, it’s because I wrote them. I have no team no staff. It’s just me.

So how does a freelancer move forward? Well, you can’t work more hours. And so the way to move forward is to get better clients yet. Better clients people who challenge you who talked about your work people who demand better people who eagerly pay more for what you do? You don’t want the people who are on five or looking for a cheap photographer.

You want the people who were looking for Gwen people who are looking for the work you want to do and becoming better at being a freelancer is the work if you choose to be a freelancer and that leads to the final part of what I wanted. Talk about which is the idea that there is a hard part.

What is the hard part about being a food photographer?

Well learning how to use glycerin or LED lights or a flash or other ways of prepping the food. Those are things that people can learn they can learn them by watching some videos reading a book or hanging out with people like you that’s not the hard part.

The hard part is finding clients.

The hard part is moving up to find better. Better clients. The hard part is finding the reserves the community reserves the intestinal fortitude to stick it out when you don’t have any clients that that is in fact what this community desperately needs to get better clients. And so as you navigate your way through this now that you know what the hard part is you can decide does being in a community help you does leading a community help you if you are known.

As the person who runs the most important community on food styling and photography. It seems to me you might get better clients. If you are able to organize and align other food photographers so that you share leads with each other so that you establish standards for the industry so that you showcase each other’s work that only leads to a forward ratchet. We see this in just about every Any industry that has Freelancers in it doing creative work Dane Sanders wrote The Definitive book on how wedding photographers can level up he gave away every secret he knew by doing that. He got better gigs as a wedding photographer not fewer gigs because what is scarce is trust and what is scarce is awareness that the more you can be trusted the more you can tell your story. Bigger stage the more likely it is that the clients you seek will come to you for what they need. So I didn’t answer your question specifically because there are so many layers to it and I’m not sure that there is just one answer but there are choices and the choices in front of you are to be part of a community or to run one or two leave it all together.

The choices are to live with the clients you’ve got or to figure out what the hard work would be like to to get better clients as we choose to fill our days Freelancers make a choice every day that choice is to spend the only asset we’ve got our time to help us make the change we seek to make in the community we serve and you’re looking right at the fork in the road you have choices to make about your time you have choices to make about the community and when you make those choices in a coherent way you’re going to get to You see to go.

Thanks for leading and thanks for this question. I’ll see y’all next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great book a great essay a great idea anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right. Is it puts you. In a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -a-complex-of-complexes- <==

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence whether sought or unsought by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and Military Machinery of Defense with our peaceful methods and goals.

So less security and Liberty May Prosper together in 1961 as he was walking out the door after his service to the country President Dwight D.

Eisenhower did something incredibly Brave As a Statesman he stood up and he decried the military-industrial complex, but complexes are all around us. Hey, it’s Seth and this is a Kimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about binary systems and how they keep going. But first here’s a message from our sponsor.

Akimbo is back running it again to find out more visit akimbo.com go for all the details the people Meet will change your life.

It’s been 60 years since Eisenhower described to the public a two-part system, which some people say has three or four parts and we talked about complexes all the time. It’s fun to talk about the blank industrial complex, but I’m not sure we’re really seeing what’s going on. So I want to take a few minutes to outline what Eisenhower meant and how its showing up in so many other parts of our world what he was talking about. Sometimes called the military industrial. A complex sometimes called the war industrial complex or perhaps the military-industrial Congressional complex.

But what it all adds up to is this if capitalists can make money doing something and they have levers to use to be able to do it more they are incented to do so that seems pretty obvious. Think about the fact that for a million years groups of people have used weapons to To either assault each other or protect themselves from each other hence military, but when you add to it the fact that shareholders are going to make money. If a company they are part of makes more guns makes more bullets makes more bombs than they want to do that more.

Sometimes we call that marketing. It’s one of the many ways to use or misuse that term how to get your customers to buy more stuff because bye. More stuff is how you grow and in a second, we’ll talk about why you need to grow but in the meantime, let’s understand. We have companies that make a profit selling things to a customer and the thing they are selling our weapons who’s the customer while in most places. The customer is the government and the United States where I live is a country where you can use money to influence the government capitalists are good at using money to get what they want.

And so there’s a system in place in the system is companies make weapons those weapons make them money. They use some of that money to get Congress to buy more weapons and around and around it goes that’s why it’s called a complex. It’s a system where one thing feeds the other which feeds the other and around it goes and in the case of the military-industrial complex, we needed to add Congress scientists and the rest of it because that keeps the engine going.

Faster, but it’s not just the military industrial complex. We are now living with the pain caused by the prison industrial complex because like the military prison used to be something that cultures had to do because there were outline behaviors that they wanted to try to remove from society. But once you turn prison into a profit-making venture, then the person who owns part of the Even wants there to be more prisoners and the way you can get more prisoners is by paying the government to criminalize more behaviors by influencing government action. So those behaviors lead to more prison time and around and around it goes. So when we’re talking about a complex what we’re talking about is a system that has ended up being taken over by the need for a profit-making venture to grow.

Why does a profit-making venture need to grow isn’t enough enough and this leads to the other half of understanding what’s going on here which is the idea of Leverage that if a company is competing against other companies, it probably needs resources lobbyists better tools technology Innovations. Whatever it is to beat its competitor how to get those resources you get those Resources by Borrowing money, maybe you get it from an investor.

Maybe you get it from a bank and what we know about money. The essence of Economics is there’s something called opportunity cost opportunity cost means that if I loan person a the money, I can’t also loan it to person B opportunity cost means if I invest in stock see I can’t also invest in stock D choices are made and so organizations essentially bid against each other.

For who’s going to pay off the best? Well, once you’ve done that and you’ve raised the money now, the investors are holding you to it and so lines you might not have crossed before you now feel like you have to cross because of the cost of money and as you succeed there’s pressure to borrow more money pressure to get more investors because if you don’t someone else might and so the ratchet turns and this cycle led to the extraordinary efficiency.

Of the Industrial Age that it is so much cheaper and more efficient to build a car that it used to be. That’s because the leverage that’s because of the race to win at opportunity costs. So what we end up with is this industrial complex that begins to spread because even if a Founder means well, once the company starts to move forward and there are competitors, which is another piece of the capitalist open market system.

Then competitors start to change the rules and you have a choice of apparently either losing or going closer to a line. You said you are never going to go near years ago. I wrote about the TV industrial complex. I don’t know if I was the first person but once you hear it, you can’t unhear it the TV industrial complex is a system that says wow, we have this technology that lets us beam messages In Living Color into people’s homes.

How are we going to create that system? Well, we could build the public broadcasting system and figure out how to make the channels in the shows that people will benefit from watching or we can leave it to the market because if we leave it to the market the market is a need sensing device the market understands that time also comes with an opportunity cost the market will rush to serve people short-term needs and so people put on shows not because they think the world needs to see them.

Because they know the world will watch them and why do they want the world to watch them? Because they pay for the shows by running ads and the people who are buying the ads are encouraging the people who make the shows to reach as many people as possible because that’s how they pay for the ads the people who make the shows if they sell more ads get more resources. They can borrow more money and get more resources. So instead of making a 1 million dollar TV show they can make a six million dollar. Dollar TV show and they can win an Emmy Award.

And so the cycle continues the TV industrial complex began by solving our problem of what do we put on TV? But now it is solving the problem of how do the advertisers get a bigger return on the money. They are spending and what about the education industrial complex? Well, you’re already seeing the theme Here, how did colleges end up the way colleges ended up they were Like this 60 years ago 60 years ago. They were much much less expensive.

The college’s don’t make a profit in the sense of a for-profit organization, but the people who run colleges and universities definitely get benefits. Some of those benefits can be measured in dollars many of them can be measured in Prestige and power. So what does it mean when you build a gym? What does it mean when you build something that looks more like a country club? Bob than a university, well, it attracts a certain kind of parent that parent might have a certain kid with a certain attitude that parents certainly has a different way of spending money and brings Prestige to the system because of are hard-wired for hundred and fifty year old tradition of privilege and class and race and what’s it like around here?

And so the cycle continues Malcolm Gladwell did a great podcast years ago. About Vassar versus Boden Boden has a better cafeteria. Bowden has a more beautiful campus Vassar offers more grants to people who don’t have the money to come and pay full Freight. What’s the point while the college industrial complex cycled in cycled based on The Leverage of how do you please alumni?

What does growth even mean? Where are we headed and back to the industrial model Factory? He’s have long needed a surplus of compliant workers because if there are enough compliant workers available the factory can move the ratchet forward make good stuff cheaper. How do you get compliant Factory workers? Well it helps if you start when the kids are five years old and train them to sit still to follow instructions to do their homework to do what they are told to graduate year after year and if they’re defective hold them back and process them again.

Go through the system not because we’re encouraging creativity and insight and connection. But because we are encouraging you to be part of an industrial complex going forward and then there’s the wedding industrial complex, which I’ve talked about before so we took a very simple ancient idea that some people want to get married to other people forever and then a queen comes along and she wears a white dress and then debeers comes along and they mark it.

The diamond ring every truffle man has talked about this beautifully on her podcast and we end up with another complex the wedding industrial complex, which when it’s working properly creates a special day at a fair price that people remember forever but is also optimized to keep feeding the culture in a loop around and around and around there’s an old joke that there are no towns with only one lawyer once there’s one lawyer. There’s going to be two lawyers.

And so yes, the legal industrial complex because we do need agreements. But we also know that if a lawyer sends you an agreement you need a lawyer to and so the lawyer’s lawyer each other and the same things true for trademark and for copyright and for takedown notices and everything else that what ends up happening when a binary complex gets out of whack is the first word is forgotten and Industrial complexes. What is remembered?

Because we are ratcheted only in One Direction by leverage by debt by people waiting for their return. Is there a way forward is there a way out? Well, it’s fascinating to look at something like Wikipedia which in pop culture terms has definitely stalled in the last few years stalled because the shiny dark patterns of social media have taken a lot of the buzz away from what used to be one of the three or four Biggest websites on the entire internet Wikipedia has no industrial complex associated with it.

They could pay all of their bills in four days. If they just turned on Google ads and then turn them off again. But Jimmy and the rest of the people at Wikipedia don’t do that. They don’t do that because they know that once they did it for four days. They do it for eight days because there’s another feature they could add they could start hosting videos. I could start doing this and they can start doing that and then they’d be running the ads all the time and You’re running the ads all the time.

You know who you’re working for you’re working to make that number go up. And so when we look at the horrible behavior of Facebook and Twitter and the rest it’s because they are industrial complexes who have been wrestling with opportunity cost when Twitter was young and thinking about going public I controversially said the big mistake they could make would be to run ads and to promised their investors. And that they would grow and grow and grow the alternative would have been to charge people who wanted a premium membership 50 bucks or a hundred bucks offer them data offer them that blue badge that some people want offer them all the things that a professional would want on Twitter and if a million people pay you a hundred dollars a year, it’s enough. You don’t have to go public.

You only have a hundred employees. It’s enough. We have a chance to contribute if we want to You without being part of a complex and software is one fascinating way that we can double-cross the system of the industrialist because the industrialist is all about marginal cost raw materials. Supply chains software can change a bunch of those rules because software can be free and once we start interacting with people in that way not to harvest their attention and turn it into money, but simply to produce something without a complex.

Well go ask someone who’s part of the Poetry industrial complex. Oh wait, there isn’t one. And as a result, there’s a lot less poetry in the world than there used to be poets ended up becoming people like Bob Dylan instead because there is a music industrial complex. The music industrial complex has put music into every corner of our life.

And for me, I think it’s a pretty good deal. I think the negative side effects of the music industrial complex are tiny compared to what Dwight D Eisenhower warned. It’s about 60 years ago, but we need to keep our eyes open and we need to make real thoughtful decisions about what complex are we building next years ago shortly before he passed away.

I was visiting my dad in Buffalo New York. My dad like me loved placebos and he’d been going to the health food store on a regular basis and what I found in his medicine cabinet were a hundred and Thirty-One pills. He was taking every single day. Because the placebo industrial complex had gotten out of hand because the story that he was buying wasn’t helping him anymore.

It was helping an industry that wasn’t in it to help him. It was part of a complex a binary complex that had lost its way and so all around us. We have the chance to put up boundaries for people who are begging us for boundaries because boundaries actually help complexes because capitalist can’t help themselves with there are no Andres but if there are boundaries and people know what Edge to go to then they’ll go to the edge and stop and so back in the days of network TV, which had lots of problems.

One of the problems wasn’t irresponsible advertising. It didn’t get out of hand. There was someone who is looking at the taste of the ads there was someone looking at what the ads were promoting and the advertisers were okay with that because they needed boundaries. So what we have a chance to do is to look at Capitalists in the eye and say you know what more leverage might not be the answer what we have the chance to do is to realize the culture is our culture doesn’t belong to the industrial complex. There’s always a word that comes before industrial complex and that other half whether you’re a student or a bride or somebody who’s worried about the environment or somebody who’s worried about violence or safety.

We all have a chance to speak up and say yeah this industrial complex got us here, but it’s going to need some boundaries because its purpose. His not to reward the shareholders who got in early its purpose is to build the culture culture doesn’t exist to make capitalist. Happy capitalism exists to make culture work.

Thanks for listening to my rant. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with a question from a previous episode. But first here is a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up what? The time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around learning not education not certificates not grades but learning together it works if you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at akimbo are up to visit akimbo.com go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and exclusive. How it all works.

Thanks Seth.

It’s Maria.

Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin.

Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here – this is our new pump pricer warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex.

Hey, son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece.

Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I do love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this any previous episode or whatever is on your mind. I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button. This one’s got a lot of layers to it. Here we go.

Hey Seth Zach Garcia from Hiram, Utah, Utah the best kept secret. By the way. My question is about your episode on how advertising built the world. I’m Marketer I run marketing for a company that coaches Heating and Cooling and plumbing businesses to wow their customers.

And we prior to covid-19 gained the majority of our customers by going to trade shows and events. We’d set up a booth we speak in a breakout session or keynote would mingle with business owners, and that’s how we grew our business in the last year. We haven’t done that instead. We’ve relied primarily on email and good old-fashioned phone calling to build our business.

However, we’re looking for ways to grow we’re looking for is to find more of the people who need our help and everybody points me to things like Facebook and Google Now, I personally don’t find joy in spending time figuring out the Facebook algorithm or how to optimize for the Google auction. I don’t like feeling like I’m working for Facebook or Google if that makes sense.

So my question for you is what’s the best way for any marketer who doesn’t feel good about contributing to the Google Monopoly or sucking people’s time and attention and contributing to the dopamine drip a Facebook or as you describe it in. This is marketing the social media Merry-Go-Round keep spinning faster and faster than never goes anywhere. I don’t feel good about contributing to those things.

I’m wondering how I should be thinking about this how I should approach this. As we try to grow our business.

Thanks.

Thanks for this there are two things that are going on here and I want to talk about them separately. The first one is that you are selling a service that most people in your industry don’t believe they need or want either because they’re busy installing heating and air conditioning equipment or their business is just right for them.

So the thing that goes on at the conferences where you’ve had so much success. Is this the right people Are coming they are enrolled in the journey you want to go on what kind of person takes off time from work travels across the country to go to a conference for people who own heating or AC businesses? Well, the answer is someone who wants more someone who’s leaning into it someone who is thirsty for Progress because they’re all in the right place and you are there you get the benefit of the doubt you have a chance to earn their attention and maybe turn that Tension into trust and now that we don’t have those things in our lives.

We wonder if we wasted them in the past knowing how precious they were. Just how much care could we bring to them? How much more could we invest in time or effort to help the people who are already demonstrating through their actions that they want what you have to help them find the confidence find the insight to go forward with you, but that is water under the bridge or Freon out of the pipe whatever cliche we’re looking for.

And so now the question is how to replace it. Well, there are people who will tell you that you should buy that attention from Facebook or Google and there are two giant problems here. The first problem is this if you enter an auction for that attention you and your competitors will be competing against each other for that attention and all of the money will go to Facebook and Google It is stacked against you. It is very difficult to find your Niche when you’re in an open auction in an efficient market place for attention and the second problem is the kind of person you seek.

I’m going to assert here generalizing stereotyping a 55-year Old owner of one of these businesses who’s been doing it with their family for 20 or 30 or 40 years probably isn’t typing the magic words. You need to have them type. In to Facebook or Google hoping that they will find you. It is much more straightforward for them to listen to their peers and go to a conference than it is for them to start Googling something and then possibly clicking on an ad which they are disinclined to trust and then possibly reading about what you do and on and on so you can see the problem here. The problem is the conference organizer in your old model did the hard work of putting that fish in that Barrel.

And that job which you now think of as your job is a whole different industry a whole different way of doing business. So if I were in your shoes, I would think about a longer-term Drip by drip. Oh, forgive me for the water reference again Drip by drip approach that might lead to long-term benefits. It might have a couple elements to it.

The first one is this who is writing the most important diary. In newsletter journal for the people you seek to serve because the cost of you writing it and distributing it for free digitally to a hundred or five hundred or thousand or five thousand of these contractors is vanishingly low. If you can generously show up with news with Insight with editorials with things that turn on lights for people in this industry. So generously that they share it with their Piers you can build an asset and that asset is permission the privilege of delivering it dissipated personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them when I started my blog. I only had a hundred readers a hundred meters became a hundred and fifty and then 200 and then it grew and sure 8,000 blog posts later. It’s a really big number but you won’t need 8,000 blog posts. If you can find your smallest viable audience if you can nurture them. You can lead them.

And then the second half is who is connecting these people who is hosting the private Facebook group or discourse board or Discord discussion for this group who is organizing the regular online conferences and podcasts and conversations that are must listen to for the kind of person who used to go to these conferences because it’s easy to defend are sunk costs. It’s our previous commitments the way we used to do things but like all revolutions. It destroys the perfect and then it enables the impossible. It is impossible to imagine that you might have the ability to talk to 3,000 HVAC contractors for free every week.

But of course you can if they want to listen, so the Urgent races to cut out Facebook and cut out Google and not get dependent on flyby attention. Feeling and instead to nurture it to grow it bit by bit until you are the center of a community and I think you might discover over time that being the center of the community might be even more valuable than the thing you sell because human beings like being in community with people like us doing things like this and we need someone to be in the center someone to put on the show someone to say. Hey kids over here.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for leading will see you next week.

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet like we have data what all-nba gets right. Is it puts you. In a context where you’re part of a community that says yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas you got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page when you’re going to face the possibilities within you when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide you gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical, but it’s the number one reason why Why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question.

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==> -your-mileage-may-vary- <==

Carrie alaka might sound, like the name of a talk show host, but that’s not it carry a locker. Is a bug, a member of the Lac family. It’s the only bug that gives its life to create something that almost all of us eat on a regular basis. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

Be back in a second to talk about the mileage on your Prius, and the bugs you’re eating. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Find out more at akimbo.com / go hope to see you there.

So if you’ve ever swallowed a shiny pill, if you’ve ever had a milk dud, or maybe even a junior mint, what are you eating?

You’ve been eating a Lac bug specifically. You’ve been eating the feces of a Lac bug because what the Lac bug does is it lives on the branches of trees, often in Thailand, and eat its sap. And then leaves behind In something, all over the branches, as it turns into a cocoon insect, we then take those branches. Scrape off the gunk.

Denature, some alcohol, mix it together and we end up with pharmaceutical grade glaze, that glaze ends up getting put on lots of things that we eat. And most of us would rather not know about it, and now that you do know about it, it’s entirely likely that. The next time you have a headache, you will still take A shiny pill.

Because if you think about it, we eat bugs and things related to bugs all the time. The question is, why isn’t that written in big letters on the side of the box of Milk Duds? Then consider the problem that they had when they launched the Prius? A whole bunch of years ago when the Prius came out was the first modern hybrid car has a battery. It also has gas tank and it is capable of getting far more mileage than any other car. It’s size how to figure out its mileage. Well, there’s a lot of rules in the United States about how to figure out the mileage of a car.

Because if you think about it, the mileage of a car that’s going a hundred miles an hour is different, then the mileage of a car that’s going downhill at 30 but we came up with a bunch of rules and the car companies are supposed to follow them, but the rules didn’t apply to the Prius. The other thing about the Prius is right there on the dash board with a digital readout. Is your Aunt mileage, which means when you’re going downhill, it had a round off because your current mileage dividing by zero was Infinity.

Regardless, you could see the mileage, go up and go down. And so, in the Prius first came out, they told people to mileage was, I think something like 48 miles per gallon, but if you drove the car, like the hot rodder that you and I might want to be, you weren’t seeing anything close to that 30 or 40 miles per gallon on the other hand, if you decided to become a Meyler.

If you waited till conditions were good, put extra air in the tires. You go on a round-trip and average 80 or more miles per gallon. There was no correct answer. There was simply a method and the marketers it Prius. How to make a choice, the choice is, should they say up to 80 miles per gallon? Should they give you a number that makes you feel like you’re within Striking? Distance is their goal to tell the complete and total truth? Of what your mileage will be. When that is an unknown or is it to create something that gives you peace of mind and let you go forward. Happy that you bought this item, compare this to the emissions Scandal that Volkswagen put itself. In discovered in 2015 in the US by the EPA it was shown that 11 million cars. Were deliberately programmed by Volkswagen so that when they were going through emissions testing, Look like they were behaving well, but once the car realized it was no longer in a testing mode, it would do as badly as 40 times, the accepted level of pollution. When people heard about this, they were stunned annoyed and shocked because Volkswagen was deliberately hiding lying, and subverting rules that clearly applied to them. Marketers, have to make choices all the time and Commercial speech is not. Not the same as free speech.

If we think about who’s in the movies, well, there are makeup artists. What exactly do makeup artists do is it lying for a movie to use, a stunt double, when it’s not really the star putting themselves on the line, is it better when Tom Cruise does his own stunts, breaking his leg while trying to make a movie?

Or is it lying when they make Tom Cruise look taller than he actually is in a movie? When you see A celebrity before they’ve been photo shopped for the cover of a magazine. Is it disappointing to you that the cover doesn’t match? Because after all there are lying they know what the celebrity looks like. And the person who’s on the cover or the person who’s in the movie doesn’t look like the person you’re going to see if you go out for breakfast and bump into them at the diner.

So what does it mean for a marketer to show up and tell us what we need to hear? Exactly a hundred years ago uh Armstrong Roberts invented, the stock photo before that if a marketer or a news organization wanted to use a photograph that had a hire a photographer and a great expense, get the photograph but what Roberts figured out is that if he could just assemble a bunch of people in front of a plane that was about to make history and take a picture, he could license that picture over and over again and so stock photography was born stock photography.

If he began as a way for news organizations, to pool resources, and use the same picture over and over again. But it was quickly, discovered that it was a lot of money to be made licensing photos to marketers who wanted to use a picture that they didn’t have to organize themselves. And today we know a stock photo when we see it, we know that those five people standing around in front of a computer all perfectly representing the culture. We would like to be part, I love shiny and bright pointing at something.

Well, those aren’t real customers of the company and that’s not really their computer. And those people probably aren’t friends, and yet just like makeup in the movies or someone else doing the stunts, we accept this that stock photography has become part of our vocabulary. And the question is, when does it cross the line and stop being? Oh, yeah. That’s a stock photo. Oh yeah. They’re putting makeup on that actor and instead becomes something like the VW. Emissions Scandal, is there a line? Where do we draw the line?

Commercial speech is not the same as free speech. One of the reasons is, the commercial speech can be Amplified by money again. And again, in ways, we don’t expect. So let me tell you about my first day of work back in 1983 as a summer. Intern, the morning was a little rough, they weren’t expecting me. They’d forgotten to tell the others. Is that I was coming and in the afternoon, they say, come on, Seth, we’re going to Cabot advertising. We’re going to be reviewing the ads, they’ve put together for our first Nationwide. Ad campaign, Spinnaker was a tiny company, only 30 people were there at that time, but they had raised millions of dollars and they were prepared to spend it.

People magazine, National ads, the whole thing, we were the pioneers of well-produced, well, packaged computer games for kids educational games, things like fraction fever, or Kids on Kies software, you could happily let a seven-year-old use on a Commodore 64 and the plan was Kmart Target. Lechmere, giant big box stores selling our stuff in quantity and so the first dad, so I get there and here’s the debate. The debate is, should the ad show to parents and their daughter or two parents and their son?

And everyone looked to me because I was the youngest in the one that was the easiest to get to talk first. Which one do you like better? And before I gave my answer, I didn’t really think deeply about the fact that if you’re pioneering advertising and a market, well if you start modeling that, this is something for young boys, then you’re going to change the culture because young girls are less likely to use it.

Not to mention the whole idea of gender fluidity which in 1983 was hardly ever Spoken of. But here we were making this commercial speech decision, that was going to change the culture and organizations have been doing it since long before 1983 and continue to do it to this day. What do we model? What story do we tell?

What ingredients do we talked about and which ones? Don’t we talk about? What does it mean to say? What’s going to happen down? Stream to this packaging? Is it just going to get ignored or are we? To build an entire business around it, that what they’ve done, it Patagonia is stunning. That Patagonia has decided that instead of compromising their way forward to get bigger, they would walk away from compromise and try to actually do business in a way that makes things better to tell stories in a way that help people see the world a bit differently to invest their profits in lobbying, to do things like save a canyon If you’ve ever bought a can of soup, you’ve probably seen the picture of the soup on the label and every picture of soup that doesn’t show a flat featureless pool of liquid is faked. It’s faked because there’s enough liquid in the can for all the ingredients to drop to the bottom.

It’s a serving suggestion. If you believe that having marbles in the bottom of your bowl, is inappropriate way to eat soup that if they fill a bowl with marbles, And then put a can of soup on top of it. It will look just like that Chunky Soup in the picture. There are food stylists who are busy rearranging, the sesame seeds on the top of a McDonald’s, Big Mac. So when it’s time for its photo, shoot, it looks just right.

Is that what we want makeup for food? Well, the answer is yes. We do the answer in this moment. As I am recording, this is that we punish marketers who put people in there. Dads who look like everyday people with no makeup that we care a lot about the lighting that is used in the picture that is showing up in front of us.

And so marketers have this interesting choice to make which is should they be telling a story of the world as they’d like it to be when they are talking about the outcomes that come from attending their educational institution or taking their Placebo? Should they show us every single outcome? Because even that isn’t the full truth. We don’t know what’s going to happen next.

Should they show us the happy outcomes because modeling the happy outcomes? Makes it more likely, that more happy outcomes will occur. Can that be done? Truthfully. What is it that the customer actually wants from companies that show up with commercial speech? One of the things to understand about capitalism and marketing is the capitalism is a really good listening device.

That marketers spend an enormous amount of time paying attention to what’s working. Being listening carefully for what people want, what they need, what they react to how they take action. And so it’s not okay to let a marketer off the hook. When they say, well, I just gave the market what it wanted because yeah, there are people in the market who want you to sell them an addictive drug that will kill them, but that doesn’t mean you should.

At the same time, the market is speaking up. The market is making clear about what Stories We want to hear and which ones we don’t want to hear. More than ever before, a certain group of consumers is speaking up and saying we want more transparency in the way you show up in the way you act in the way, you tell us the truth about what you’re doing and what you’re not doing, but let’s be really clear.

Carry a laka is not going anywhere. It may skeeve. You out to know that you’ve been eating the Lac bug every single time you’ve eaten something that was supposed to put a smile on your face, or get rid of a headache. And if enough people are upset about it, it’s entirely possible that a corn-based substitute will gain traction.

But in the meantime, we’ve been fooling ourselves and we’ve been fooling ourselves on purpose. We like the shiny objects. We like the nice treats. We like to not know, Precisely where it was made, who made it and what the repercussions are. But every once in a while, marketers are discovering that there are lines being drawn if they’re smart, they will Embrace and welcome consistent government guidelines and regulations. So they don’t have to keep guessing about what they’re supposed to do, and what they’re not supposed to do.

It got a lot easier for Prius. Once there were actual rules about how to report the mileage of a hybrid car. Our because guess what, most marketers, most capitalists don’t want to invent new rules. They like to win by following the existing rules and so it’s up to us to decide what those rules ought to be.

Where are the boundaries, what will we decide? We want to know, what will we decide? We can’t know because as we function in a modern industrialized economy, even the people who are saying they’re getting off the grid aren’t quite Off the Grid, mark Delivers too many treats and too many Smiles for people to walk completely away from it.

So, commercial speech is not free speech. If you’ve got money, you’ve got a choice about what to say and how to say it, and how often to say it and how loudly to say it and when marketers speak, we change the culture. And it’s up to us to decide how to change the culture and how to lead instead of just worrying about how to follow.

Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning to There it works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at akimbo are up to visit a Kimbo.com, go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks, it’s Maria.

Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading sound. This is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here.

– this is on the Pain Scale.

Entire sir warm, greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth Name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. They said this is Rex. Hey son. Hi. This is Russell news from Greece. Hi this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you.

If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, please, visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button. I want to share three questions this week. They’re remarkably similar. But each one is different.

So here we go. Hey Seth this is William chernoff from Vancouver Canada. I’m a young jazz musician and my question is about the lazy concept of having only one number to measure and focusing on how to make that one number go up.

When I first heard you mentioned this concept, I thought about Spotify, if you’d find me on Spotify, you’d see one number beneath my name, monthly listeners. I think it’s nonsense that this number receive so much attention from both industry colleagues and everyday people. I can’t get Spotify to stop showing this number. So prominently so my question is, what are some more qualitative metrics that I can look for to have a more sensible outlook on, my jazz music career, thank you for everything you do.

Thank you, William.

The key question is this, which number are you measuring? And why does it matter to you? What other people are measuring. So to pick an absurd example, if Forbes Magazine is measuring the richest people in the world and you’re a billionaire, why does it make you sad? Angry disappointed, frustrated if you are Miss measured and they report, you having five billion dollars when you actually They have ten.

Why is it that people who have everything they could imagine when it comes to money. Get frustrated. When the measurement that other people see, doesn’t align with how they want to be measured while clearly what matters to them is not how much money they have but where do they rank in the hierarchy.

Now, if you’re a jazz musician, you got plenty of things that you could be keeping score of keeping track of paying attention to if you want your numbers to go up. Up on a place like Spotify. Well, stop making Jazz and start making pop because pop by definition is more popular. No, that’s not really the goal. The goal is to make music that matters to someone and to be able to do it in a sustainable way.

So the number of streams you’re getting is completely and totally irrelevant. Don’t look at it. You don’t need to look at it. And anyone who is looking at, it doesn’t have to matter to you. You don’t have to decide to play a game with rules that you don’t like all too. Often people who are doing the hard work of creation of building. Something would also like to be recognized by the masses for what they’re doing and almost every time that’s not the case, which is one reason, why? So few people stick with it long enough to get to the other side, Patricia Barber, the great jazz musician, sells out the green. Mill every Monday. There’s only a hundred seats.

That’s enough. Decide what’s enough? And then focus on making the numbers that matter to you go up.

Hey Seth, it’s Gregory with a question, regarding lazy capitalism.

What if a modern-day descendant of SEMO?

Vice came along today with a new simple measure for ethical capitalism. One that takes not only the needs of shareholders into account, but the needs of all stakeholders.

Who would you recommend it? As a starting point for the smallest viable audience? Would it be the Business Roundtable?

The UN with their sdg goals, be Corporation, folks, or some activist group. If you were some advice, who would the smallest viable audience be to you? Thank you for this Gregory.

You didn’t describe your idea, which is fine with me. There’s a real distinction between an idea that only works when everyone uses it or an idea that works. When some people use it, the challenge that we have As creators is inventors as Leaders is if we want to start with few resources picking a project that only works when everyone uses it, that’s really hard Esperanto didn’t catch on. So therefore Esperanto is a failure because even if you know how to speak Esperanto, you’re not going to bump into somebody who speaks Esperanto POS Esperanto, zamenhof, and the deck Nayyar Tonto Christian TI After Paris delinquent key West’s Mia dinochka lingua, it’s really important if you want a language to catch on, you get lots and lots and lots of people to listen to it, on the other hand, if you want to sell, handmade singing bowls from Tibet.

You only need to sell 10 or 20 or 30, or 40 and you’re done. So the challenge is some of us had was he wanted every doctor to save lives, okay, but it works, even if the doctors in just one hospital do it. If in just one Hospital, the doctors all wash their hands. The women in that hospital aren’t going to die and some of Isis mistake was trying to get everyone To adopt this idea because he had the hubris and the arrogance of being right?

And he was impatient in the face of Skeptics. If he had gone one hospital at a time, the smallest viable audience, the smallest group of people. Once he had converted three or four or five hospitals, he probably could have flipped the whole city and once he flipped the city, he could probably flip a country and then go on from there.

So any time you’re thinking of going to the Business Roundtable or the United Nations, it’s probable that you have skipped more than a few steps. All right, Seth, this is Fred in the Santa Cruz mountains.

I am doing a little catch up on some of the back episodes.

And really appreciated your comment in response to a question about research where you wreck first recommended everybody.

And I’m going to underline, everybody should understand statistics and either take a course or learn it or use it. And that’s been a big part of my role as a reliability engineer. And Working with organizations. And my question though, is that if we do our job, well, then there is not failures and then you don’t have to call customer support to return your product or repair it or whatever.

Unfortunately, when that happens there’s no obvious reward it all too often we run into situations where firefighters Eating or staying up over night or the weekend to solve some big issue, then becomes a hero and they get the rewards in the parking spot and so on. So it creates a dynamic where we don’t necessarily are recognized or rewarded for preventing problems but those that then respond to flare-ups in the field of problems, then get reward. So Creates an unwanted Dynamic, any suggestions about how to break that kind of culture so that we can get down to the business of preventing problems and and and rewarding the people that actually do that kind of work, thanks for all you do and look forward to hearing your response.

Thank you for this Fred and yes, there’s a real emergency problem just like the fire department has a problem justifying their budget, if no houses are burning down. So the question is, what can we measure instead? What can you amplify instead? You’ve seen those construction sites with the big sign that says, 212 days, without an accident.

Why would they put up a sign like that? Well, as the number keeps going up the stakes get higher. No one wants to be the person that got that number to go back down to one and what you can do with the work that you’re doing that increases safety and resilience and security. And reliability is figure out how to elevate. Other numbers to spread them to increase the stakes as you go.

How much shorter are the weights. On hold, how many fewer calls are you getting? How much our warranty returns decreasing? How can you give people data that becomes an early warning sign so that when they stop paying attention to the things that matter, they begin to notice right away. Not when it’s too late.

Thanks for your questions. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world, To distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader, who can outthink the internet. Like we have data, what all NBA gets right. Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah. That’s good, you got access to ideas, you got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you’re going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, when you going to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t Ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world.

Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -apertures- <==

Why the picture square if the lens is around?

It’s entirely possible that during his Heyday, you never bought an album from the genius Gil Scott-Heron. What has happened is that in the last 20 years, America has changed from a producer to Consumer.

And all consumers know that when a producer named z-tune the consumer has got your dance.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is a Kimbo, we’ll be back. The second to talk about aperture and pop culture. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor A kimbos small business Workshop is back, its back because it works find out what you’re missing. Find out how to work it better find out the path forward. Here’s my friend Ramon Ray to tell you about it in this Workshop, you’ll learn what you need to start and grow your business.

I can’t wait to see you in the akimbo small business Workshop.

Find out more at akimbo.com / go. Hope to see you there in the early 1980s. Five women in Los Angeles were gigging, almost every night, playing a new kind of music one, that their fans loved, they had a hit single ready to go and they were rejected by almost every single record label in the world.

It’s only through the persistent effort of their manager that they were able to finally end up on IRS records. And you already know what happened to the Go-Go’s.

Their debut, album sold, more than two million copies. It was one of the most successful debut albums of all time. And it was the first And still the only number one record created and performed by an all-women rock and roll group. How is that possible or consider the movie?

The Big Lebowski think I want to go get your toe. Believe me. There are ways dude. You don’t want to know about a believe. Yeah but Walter hell. I get you told by 3 o’clock this afternoon with nail polish, The Big Lebowski only cost fifteen million dollars to make it It has returned that many times.

Over the Big Lebowski is not a movie that most Studios wanted to make. Even though the cone Brothers had a great reputation after it debuted at Sundance, it didn’t get stunning reviews. And yet to this day, people are watching that movie when lots of the other movies, even the popular ones of its time are completely ignored what’s going on here. And what about Gil?

Not Heron.

Well, the reason that camera lenses are round but pictures. R square, is that the light that goes through the camera lens isn’t admitted through. The whole lens is admitted through a very small hole in the lens. A pinhole camera. The hole is actually a little bit bigger than a pin. It turns out that through that little tiny hole, plenty of photons can work their way to the other side. Landing on a square piece of film hence the picture. The music business is a great example of this aperture thinking in the 1980s when the Go-Go’s were trying to break through. Here’s what was scarce radio time and record store. Space, you couldn’t get in the record store unless you were on the radio and you couldn’t get on the radio unless you fit into the mold that the program director decided their station matched up with the reason that most people in. The United States didn’t get to hear Gil Scott-Heron is that there wasn’t a radio station format aligned with the kind of music he wanted to make and so as a Pioneer he was ignored what ends up happening though, when a band like the Go-Go’s somehow gets the lucky break, it needs to get started, combined with the extraordinary Artistry and insight of their hit song.

Is it turns out consumers I don’t really want to be put in the box that program directors are putting them in. And so, the chain of, there’s a listener, there’s a program director, there’s a record executive, there’s management. There’s the people who booked the gigs that entire chain is based on a flawed assumption, and the flawed assumption is we can’t take a risk, we have to put out what people already like and what they already want because we can’t waste our shot.

And so conservativism, kicks in, it kicks in for Broadway shows, he kicked in for books, it kicked in for music, he kicked in for anything where there was a gate keeper, because the gate is an aperture, a small little hole between the people who create things and the market that is open to consuming it.

And here’s the punchline. You’ve already guessed it. We got rid of The Gatekeepers. In many ways. There is definitely a Porsche Population that wants to listen to what The Gatekeepers pick. But what the long tail as named by Chris Anderson is simple to understand but really deep and profound on its impact on our culture and it’s this anyone can publish a book on the Kindle, anyone can put a song on iTunes.

Anybody can perform a play in their house and put it on YouTube Suddenly It’s Has on ttle. It’s not vertical. Suddenly the scarcity is not the program director, the space in the record store, the ability to book a theater. None of those things are driving culture today and of course, this idea of the aperture doesn’t just apply to Broadway plays, or to music, or two books, and also applied, for a really long time to the news. And that helps us see the It’s sword. That what happened in newsrooms across the world for a hundred years is a meeting every day about what goes on the front page, a meeting about how long an article could be a meeting about whether something doesn’t appear in the paper at all.

Because the opportunity cost of running, a story in the newspaper is, you can’t run a different story and this scarcity, having to push things through a small aperture. To reach a large audience, created the very idea of our culture, having a center. And so the good news, the good news is new, voices are being heard. The good news is, there is no opportunity cost because the web isn’t going to run out of room. There’s an unlimited amount of space on blogs or on medium or on podcasts for that matter but and it’s a big but without a gatekeeper nobody is Responsible and the dynamic has shifted from.

I better be careful because my spot as a gatekeeper is at risk. If I am careless or hurtful to, there is an incentive for me to be Reckless because being Reckless, gets you, the attention of people on The Fringe whereas being careful makes you one of many in the center. And so the dynamic in the media in all media has Now, shifted away from the conservative idea of one voice. One culture, people in sync. I can prove it. Here are the facts. Let’s make sure this isn’t a dud to.

Let’s get a little bit crazy about this. Let’s go way to the edges. It doesn’t matter if it’s true, if it bleeds it leads. So we’re all surrounded by bleeding now. Cultural imperialism is also aligned with this and That’s not a good thing. The whole idea of being able to keep some music from being heard by people, not rewarding certain kinds of Acts, keeping the quote Purity, unquote of different kinds of Arts, the same, right? White man, who are artists hung in galleries or white men who are part of rock and roll groups.

And the irony, the punch line at the end, is that Broadway which has the most scarcity and a scarcity that will continue for as long as there is Broadway because it is not digital, and there aren’t very many, theaters has been inherently conservative in that Broadway musicals. Almost always sort of look and feel like Broadway musicals. It is a very distinct, genre unto itself.

Well, a few years ago, the goal Remember, the Go-Go’s the Go-Go’s, who couldn’t get a record made the Go-Go’s who became a sensation with their best-selling debut ended up with a Broadway show, and I saw it and it was great. They somehow figured out how to merge together this new wave, pop band with teenagers, who wanted to go to a Broadway show with the genre of a Broadway musical. I wish I’d seen it more than once I saw two days before it closed and I miss it. Where do we go from here?

Where we go from here is an understanding that the long tail which allows lots of voices to be heard. Also means that most things that get her, don’t get heard by very many people that the average book on the Kindle is getting read by a dozen people. Perhaps that the average song on the iTunes Store probably gets her two or three or four times just do the math with a million new things coming out. How could it be any more than that?

And so culture culture wants to coalesce culture, wants to be able to say People Like Us, do things like this, but it’s not going to be limited by the FCC saying there’s only 18 FM radio frequencies available. It’s going to be limited by who collects permission, who earns the right to be a new kind of gatekeeper who by mentioning a book on their blog or by mentioning another video on their YouTube channel. Is able to make something a hit And I think we will probably end up back closer to a medium tail that the long tail starts to get banal and inane when it gets too extreme and The Gatekeepers to Dick, Clark’s picking the winners, not enough, but somewhere in the middle, there might be a sweet spot and along the way, would each of us as creators of culture has the chance to do is hone our voice. Practice shipping the work, figure out what our smallest viable. Audiences see them, understand them cater to them, give them something that they want to share and then if we can earn permission to do it, we can become our own gatekeeper.

And that is really where all of this settles out, each of us is going to become responsible. For what we put our name, on each of us is going to have a following maybe five people, maybe 50,000 people. And what we do with that following, we can’t use as an excuse. Oh, this is what everyone is doing.

We can’t use as an excuse. That’s all my boss would. Let me do instead we get to stand up for what’s right? And bring things. We’re proud of to the world. We will never have hits like mash was a hit like Elton. John was a hit and yes like the Go-Go’s we’re hit where we’re going to end up is somewhere closer to the Middle where some people are going to be able to find their true fans, and make the work that they are proud of and being proud of Your work and not hiding behind a badge or a label, or some sort of anonymity is the only way to make things better.

Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening. We’ll be back in a second, with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is the time to learn? A new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp, an independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together. It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.

I’m /. Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria.

Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new pump.

This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry.

My question is Is and that completes my question as, you know, I do love to hear from you. If you got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you visit. Akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button. A couple questions this week about the rights and responsibilities of giant corporations, but first, here’s a question from Jeff.

It’s a thanks for all that you do and share. Thank you for answering my last question, a couple of years ago as a parent of two small children. I think about the world, the growing into and fully agree with you that the best skills they can learn would be how to solve interesting problems and how to lead one other skill. That seems important though. May fall under leadership is storytelling.

Some Curious have any thoughts or suggestions on how to develop the skill of Storytelling and kids, maybe it’s as simple as having until stories, but you’re a unique view on this would be appreciated.

Thanks Jeff. Your kids are lucky to have you. My Take having spent a lot of time with a lot of kids, is that kids are really good at telling stories. They are told stories. They listened to stories and they tell stories, but two things are getting in the way as we go forward. The first one is that adults rushed them.

We are so busy trying to get back to our e-mail, or to our adult conversation, or to whatever is coming in on social media that we Want the tldr, the bottom line, the short version of how was your day and when a kid starts telling a 10 or 15-minute story, that could be three sentences, we drift away.

So part of it is on us to make the space for the kid to talk. And the second half is that same social media, iPad thing. If before the pandemic, you are in a restaurant, you watch some kid who’s two years old, eating chicken fingers. The likelihood is that they also have an iPad in front of them. And an iPad is basically a digital pacifier. When you’re at that age, there might be some positive side effects from, that sort of digital manipulation that kids are taught at an early age, but there’s also no doubt that digital One Way. Call it propaganda leaves very little room for a kid to tell a story.

The what happens? Next story, The will you invent your own cow? Director story, The Coloring Outside the Lines story so we can model storytelling for our kids by handing them the work of the greatest storytellers in the world. But we also have to give them room for them to practice in a really safe and encouraging way telling their own stories.

Hey Seth, this is Mickey from Atlanta. I’ve heard you mentioned that Google doesn’t like blogs as much anymore and I think he might be viewing it through the wrong lens. But I see a larger problem now. I don’t have these numbers, and they’re likely not even attainable, but I’m willing to Guess that 10 years ago, a much higher percentage of your audience have their own blog, when they talked about your content on their own blogs. Those were huge signals to Google to rank your stuff higher.

Those kinds of signals are still very valuable to Google, but your audience doesn’t tend to produce that kind of content as much anymore case.

In point is my recent alt NBA experience, it was a phenomenal program.

But I was stunned at how few people have their own blog of. My cohort has 20 people to have blogs in between, A post maybe once or twice a month, granted many of these folks generate content other ways, such as writing books, or producing podcasts. But if they mention your content, either of those mediums, it gives you essentially no value in the eyes of Google.

I’ve been pushing my friends to blog, more both, my long-term friends and new colleagues from the alt NBA and if you are picking it up but the vast majority aren’t and it’s a little frustrating. Why do you think people are unwilling to take the time to unpack their thoughts and a medium like this? Thanks for all you do.

Thank you for this Mickey and I I am hesitant to sound self-serving when I talk about Google because yes, Google definitely puts my blogs emails into people’s Promotional and spam folder, even though there’s no good reason to do that. And there is also no doubt that Google is sending less traffic to blogs. Overall, one of the things that Google has sold the world on really hard, that is just a straight-up falsehood.

Is the idea that the algorithm is simply Received wisdom that it came from on high that it cannot be changed that it should never be manipulated that. The algorithm is the algorithm, for example, today, there was a front-page article in the New York Times about people who make a living praying on folks who can ill afford it, where someone writes a nasty article about someone on some scammy site, then they repeat it and multiply it on to dozens of other sites and then charge that person to take it down.

And then once that person, that’s paying they just repeat it again and do the process all over again and none of it would work if Google would assign just an engineer or to to making sure that no traffic went to these sites that serve no useful function. But it’s not even mentioned in the article that I could see that it’s Google job to do this because apparently the algorithm is the algorithm. That’s crazy. Talk, you don’t go to the library. Mary.

And expect that every single book ever published is on the shelves, and in the card catalog, The Librarians job includes curation. And I think that Google somehow managed to say it’s okay to make billions and billions of dollars pointing to information, but that they are not responsible in any way for curating it, but of course they are. Curating it, they are curating it because of the thousands of people who write the algorithm because it’s Not being written by a computer, it’s being written by people.

And so when you see recipes on the internet, they’re formatted in that weird way where there’s pictures and stories and stories and stories and then finally you read the recipe. Well, that’s because Google rewarded Pages for being written that way that’s a form of curation and what happened with Google and blogs shortly after they shut down. Google Reader was they realized that blogs aren’t a good. Way for Google to make money and so they manipulated the algorithm.

There are plenty of places where they can point people that make it likely that they will come back and do another search. And it’s on searches that Google makes money, they don’t make money when someone subscribes to a Blog. So the first part of your question, yeah, I think it’s on Google here to say are we elevating or diminishing the culture? The culture of the web because the web is a place just like Everywhere else.

And Google could make some small changes that were dramatically shift. What we encounter, how we encounter it, what we do when we find what we’re looking for Wikipedia, which is a treasure only is a treasure because Google defaulted to pointing to them in most search results early and up top, that was a choice of curation. I put that one down as a win, but I think their neglect of blogs is a loss.

And then the second half of your question, most people who write blogs shouldn’t write a blog because you’re going to get a lot of traffic and shouldn’t write a blog because they’re going to make money. I should write a blog because expressing herself in a semi-public consistent and persistent way is a magical way to learn and to keep track of Our Lives. Part of the problem with Twitter is the hand-to-hand combat, the short little Bon mots and phrases, that are only good if someone responds reacts. Or otherwise engages with you, that doesn’t lead us, to long term, critical thinking it leads us to playing a sort of ping-pong.

And if you like tweeting, please go ahead. But I think that most kids, and most adults should have a Blog even if it’s under an assumed name, just to have the discipline, the practice of showing up to do this work, thank you for that Mickey. And now, of course, on to Apple. Hi, Seth.

It’s Ross here from Cape Town I have a question for you regarding apple and their latest decision to enable subscriptions for podcasts.

So my question is, is this development encouraging people to join into a race to the bottom to try and make the most popular podcast for a dollar a month from as many people as possible?

Or is it?

Giving artists that you money for valuable content. I’m sure it’s a bit of both, but I suppose, my question is around apple as a platform?

Do they have a moral obligation?

To our culture, too.

Make someone a decision, one way or another, should they have done this? Basically, I worried that some sort of Race To The Bottom is encouraged by this and especially given your podcast is on Apple podcasts. Okay.

Thanks very much and keep up the good work. We love you podcast. Cheers. Bye bye.

So Apple largely popularized the podcast, they didn’t invent it, they didn’t name it, but they popularized it and then they just let it sit there. They did. Half-hearted attempts to promote certain podcasts over others, but they really just let it sit there because there wasn’t a business model for them and like Google, they are really focused much more in the last 10 years on quarterly income than they are on changing the culture.

But podcasts are a way of changing the culture. Lots of interested interesting, smart people spend time listening to, and making podcasts. So the question is, how do we decide? Because if it’s all in a big pile, and they’re hard to search because they’re an audio not in text, which podcasts get picked, which one’s get listen to do we need another True Crime podcast and so yes, on one hand we need an open system.

Because if someone has something to say we don’t want a gatekeeper to keep them from saying it, not at least until some people have heard it. But on the other hand, there is always going to be curation even apples. Lazy curation was curation of A Sort. And so when you add money to the mix, yes, some people are going to figure out how to make money doing this the same way they do in movies and television and music.

But doesn’t mean that the best music is sitting right there. Next to Taylor Swift on the top 40, the best music for you. For me might not make a lot of money but it makes a cultural impact and the same thing will continue to be true for podcasts. And if along the way podcasters can get past selling ads, which actually pushes them faster toward the bottom and instead, adopt more of a called a sub stack model, where people are paying to listen to the podcast. They want to listen, It feels to me like it could Elevate the discourse but just like Google.

There’s the question, are they curating? How are they curating? Should it simply be up for bid? I don’t think so. I think there’s room urgent need for curators in pop culture, and they can own it, and they can make a profit doing it, but they can get there by making things better. If we look at any random 10 hours, a Netflix, its way. Way better than any ten hours of ABC, TV in 1977.

That’s because someone at Netflix decided to curate. And I think if Netflix can do it, Apple can do it. And so can Google there isn’t some invisible algorithm. There’s just people, thanks for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet, like we have data what all-nba gets right is Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, what are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide. You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the Number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74.

Countries around the world.

Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -graphs-and-charts- <==

87% of all widely distributed statistics are poorly sourced or possibly inaccurate. Hey, it’s Seth, and this is akimbo will be back in a second with the world’s first audio podcast all about graphs and charts. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

Hi. It’s Benedict. You and I’m here to talk to you about how you can become a better. Storyteller storytelling is not an arch reserved for the Chosen Few. It’s a skill that you can learn just like the students have taken part in the story skills. Workshop of done, actually I had a story to tell that was really important for me but also was going to be very very important for people in the future.

It’s been absolutely be life-changing for me to see stories everywhere and to see my own stories. I was surprised that the learning was as much in the giving as in the receiving, we got to not only learn about Storyteller. We actually got to practice using stories in our everyday life if you’re ready to become a better Storyteller. I hope you’ll join us. I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming. Workshops, go make a Ruckus, skis go on sale in the summer. They don’t sell that well, though, because we’re not thinking about skiing unless you’re snow outside and graphs and charts and polls.

Well, all year round, we need to pay attention to how we are being sold ideas, how ideas are represented and misrepresented, but at least in my country in November is when we really know Notice just how badly they’re being misused. This is a podcast about graphs and charts and poles created without any graphs, charts or poles. And just so that it’s easy to focus. We’re doing it right in the middle of an on Election season because it’s always a good idea to know what is being said.

And why showing someone A graph, a chart or a pole is an intentional act. It is an act of editing. You are choosing what to show someone because you want to make a point, or if you don’t want to make a point, You’re simply wasting their time. But before we talk about those forms of graphic information, let’s talk about the pictures, the pictures in a newspaper, the pictures in a web article, my friend, Liz Jackson, who does important work in Disability Rights? Has taught me about the alt image text and what this is is text that we need to put in images that go on our website to explain, to someone who is visually impaired, what the picture is of, now it’s simple. If the picture is simply a noun, this is a picture of a cherry. This is a picture of a football.

Google likes this too, because it makes it easier for their search engines to figure out what you just put up. Sure of, but if it’s a news site, if it’s someone with an editorial point of view, if it’s someone who has made a choice about a picture, putting into text, what the picture is, and what it’s for turns out to be a really difficult decision because if you’re running a political story, it is insufficient to say and this is a picture of. So and so, who is the head of this country?

Because you didn’t pick the picture? A just for that reason you could say this is a humiliating picture showing the person being scolded by his peers. This is a picture that shows the person in the best possible light. Those words represent editorial intent and there is editorial intent. When we run pictures in the newspaper, that’s why newspapers. Spend so much time and money on pictures and the people who edit them.

They’re not simply putting up a noun because we already know what a political figure looks like they’re putting up something to amplify the intent of the story and then we get two graphs and charts USA Today. Lead the use of graphs and charts throughout newspapers. They also wreck them in many ways by making them dumb.

Why did they make them dumb? Because the editors of America’s newspaper, decided Added that Americans don’t understand statistics, that Americans will look at a picture that comes in a chart or a graph. And we’ll come to a conclusion mostly that it’s sort of static that it says blah blah blah blah blah here is some math and thus the story, The caption the headline becomes more truthy because after all here’s a picture usually a pie chart or a stacked bar chart, that proves At the headlight is correct. The alt text that would go with these graphs or charts would need to be something like here. Are some meaningless data, presented in a confusing way, designed for people who aren’t going to look deeply into how to present data.

And we’ll just go along with us because it looks like we’ve done our homework and challenging each other to say, out loud. What the point of that chart or graph is, is The first step in doing a better job of explaining how the world is actually functioning. So, there are some really simple rules to get violated all the time.

Here’s the first one. If you’re going to present information on XY axes, it’s not fair to change the axis when you’re comparing a to be, we see this all the time when news sources are trying to exaggerate Small differences. So if they’re showing something at the 50s or the 60s range, instead of starting the axis at 0, they started it 50 so they can magnify the differences and if the differences are significant, there’s nothing wrong with that. But most of the time, the differences aren’t significant at all. And so if the Dow Jones Industrial Average which most people don’t understand is up 84 points showing a graph that indicates it is skyrocketing is Absurd because as I report this the Dow is over. 20,000, a difference of 80 points, a hundred points. 200 points is the same as nothing that what they should say on the radio, which doesn’t use charts and graphs has the Dow is essentially unchanged. Today it is a waste of time to say the Dow is up. Eighty nine point four points.

The point for is a rounding error, but so is the 89 there is no news. Reason that it feels like news is that they are basing their y-axis at the zero point instead of the 20,000 or the 25,000 Mark. If it’s at 25,000 we wouldn’t even be able to see that. The graph went up. Eighty-nine Point number two, second biggest defense.

Volume is different than area and area is different than length. So if I’m going to accurately chart, the change of a single axis, like the value of the Dow, it doesn’t make sense for me to give it length and width because I’ve just multiplied its impact dramatically. It’s aligned, it’s a single number. It just went up. That’s all it is. It’s not area and it’s definitely Volume.

And so the mistake is not a mistake the intentional shortcut. Someone trying to make a point makes is by giving bulk to what is changing because it makes the change look much bigger. So for those of you who can do a little bit of math in your head which would be everyone, if something went up from 2 to 3, you can visualize that.

But if something really, really, really wide went from two stories. High two, three. Three stories high. It looks like it got a lot bigger because we multiplied it in two directions and if we start multiplying it in three directions. Now the issue gets even more magnified, which was the intent of the person who built the graph of the chart.

The third mistake which is mostly related to polling. Is this? There is the margin of error. What does margin of error even mean? Well, the reason A pole and not an election or not a census is we asked the smallest possible number of people in order to get this data we’re about to share with you. Three hundred, four hundred five hundred people.

They are not picked completely randomly, they are picked from selected groups because over time pollsters have figured out that when you ask a certain kind of person from a certain group and you ask a few hundred of them you can Multiply that up to how the population is feeling right now to within say, five percentage points of error, which means if you do a poll of this group and 47 percent of them, say, I agree with that.

There is no difference between 47, 48, 49 50. It’s all within the margin of error. We’re plunging around in the dark feeling our way forward. There is no difference between 47 and fiftieth Within The margin of error and second, we are reporting how people feel today. Not how they’re going to act a month from now. We don’t know how they’re going to act a month from now. All we know is how they feel today.

When we bring these two things together, we now see how polling is completely misused because the media wants everything to be a horse race because apparently it’s easy to sell tickets to a horse race and it turns out elections only Happen once every year or four years, that’s too far in the future.

So instead, it’s the horse race whose up today and are they up a little? Or are they up a lot? They ignore the margin of error. They ignore the very nature of what we learn from a pole. They turn it into something to manipulate the public and lately in the last 10 or 20 years, it turns out the public hears pull data.

And uses it to make decisions about what is actually happening in the world even though the people if they’re honest who made the pole, don’t know what’s actually happening. All they know is they took a snapshot in time of a group of people and applied some statistical analysis. To tell you what the odds were that they were within the realm of possibility.

So a lot of people criticized, the polls in the election between Clinton and Trump but the polls were wrong. Wrong. The poles were properly done. And misreported as certainty as if we were seeing results, we weren’t seeing results. We were seeing odds and we were seeing margin of error. So I’ve just shared three kinds of malpractice. That people who is a point of view that they want to share can commit, obviously there are more than three, but the takeaway from this needs to be as follows if someone brings you a chart or a graph.

What’s the alt text for it? If they were going to honestly right? The alt text what would they be? Writing is that getting past our filters because when we see pictures and we’re afraid of math and statistics, does it go straight to the truth part of our brain? And we just believe it because no longer is a picture worth. A thousand words, we know how easy it is to fake things in Photoshop.

Now it’s a graph or a chart that’s worth a thousand words. And when we look at the home page of the New York X which Prides itself on being correct in what it reports. And we see that little twitching Arrow at the top that an eel – pointed out was faked the poll data wasn’t twitching. They intentionally created a jumpy meter at the top of their homepage to make a stressed out to believe that breaking news was actually coming in when it wasn’t.

And so it’s on us as the consumers of this information. To wonder out loud. Why did they show this to us? Are they presenting it fairly or are they trying to make a point? And number two, which I think is really important because the people listen to this podcast. In addition, to consuming this information are often, the makers of this information is this if you have to lie with your charts and graphs, you probably are selling a point of view, you’re not proud of my hunches. It’s possible to create It charts and graphs that are inherently straightforward. That are honest that are accurately constructed and still present your point of view. Because the reason it’s your point of view is that you’ve done the research and you believe it.

And so the act of omission that were making as non-professional media voices is even more important, because guess what? Your charts are probably not making the point as effectively as they could. They might be over complicated. They might have too much data in them, they might not be clear enough. And so my advice is simple.

Before you make the chart, make the slide that says exactly what the chart is trying to prove and then strip away all the extraneous information to get to the truth. Underlying it presenting it as clearly as you can what you’re trying to say.

Here’s a hint.

If you’re using a pie chart, you’re probably doing Is it wrong? We’ll be back in a second with answers from last week’s episode but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new pal. This is Caitlin. Hi sir. Warm greetings from Chiara. Ow. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. They sent. This is Rex whoosah. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as, you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button, three heartfelt, and nuanced. Since this week, many of them speak for themselves, here we go.

Hey Seth, this is Mike in Toronto Canada in your blog’s books and podcasts you’ve pointed out a lot of the problems with the public school system, namely that it does more to promote compliance and seeking, validation from authority figures, all of, which are behaviors. That best serve an outdated or industrial economic model.

Yet, I’ve also heard you mention that you do believe in the public school system and that you put your kids through this. So, I was wondering if you could tease out some of the Nuance here, putting aside whether or not a private education is even affordable for someone. What are the values and attitudes that are gained and putting a child through the public system.

This has been on my mind lately as my wife and I are expecting our first child this summer. We clearly have plenty of time until the question takes on immediate relevance, but nothing wrong with planting the seeds of those conversations. Nice and everything. Thanks again for everything you do. You and yours are well.

Cheers.

Thanks for this question and your kid is lucky to have you and vice versa. I have a few thoughts about public school. First one, is this the more often that people who have a choice enroll their kids in public school, the better the public schools are going to get because people who have a choice can also bring their voice to the situation, they can speak up, they can teach, they can learn, they can engage, they can make it better.

Why even bother if you have a choice? Well, I think that public school around the world, helps create the fabric of culture that when lots and lots of people in the community, share a similar experience together, that shared experience can bind us together. Also, it’s important to note that throughout my country. Anyway, when done properly public school can be a bit of a Nectar a Melting Pot if you will, if we don’t get too carried away, gerrymandering school districts, the point is that kids who are next to other kids, who don’t necessarily have the means to get a fancy schools tuition paid for or scholarship from a fancy school.

That’s a great way for kids to learn shared experience. Now, I think that parents who have a choice also tend to have the ability to do something with all that homeschooling. From 3 p.m. in the afternoon to midnight kids, spend, at least as much time home. Particularly if we count the five years before school starts as they do at public school.

And so, if we view public school as a chance to build a community, to build a culture, to find an institution that needs our inputs and to contribute to it, to make it better. That feels to me like the kind of Civic engagement that makes things better now, Of course, this can’t work for all parents because some parents, maybe if they have the means don’t have the time to do this and I’m not shaming those people. And I’m also saying to people who have no choice but to send their kids to public school that you to have the opportunity and somewhat of the obligation to show up and make school better, none of this is fair.

None of it is right. Opportunities are not equally distributed and to top it all off. Most private schools are no better than most public schools except perhaps they have better, athletic fields and shorter hours. So when you add it all up, it seems to me that if we’re going to put kids through 12 or more years of school day after day after day and we want to live in a culture filled with people who have been through that, it’s on us, all of us, each of us to the ability that we are able to, to make those schools better.

I hope that helps Hi Seth it’s John here in the UK. I wanted to put to you a little dilemma that I have.

Just over a year ago, my wife passed away from cancer. But during the months and the years before she died, we had a whole raft of different diet books. Eating plans, the promised cures slowing down of cancers, removing the need for treatment.

Lots of these books, contradicted each other and I found it very frustrating that she would spend hours and days poring over these books looking at them together, trying to work out the best, Ultimate plan for her longevity.

Now, she’s passed. I’m left with a huge stack of these things that I’m stuck with. They cost a lot of money to buy.

And I have, I am stuck morally with what to do with them.

I think they are hocus-pocus they’re bogus.

If they contradict each other, they can’t all be true. Yet they gave her hope they gave us something to control.

I kind of wanted your opinion not really on what I should do with them, but you think about people putting out this information that gives people hope. But on which there is no real scientific Foundation. Thanks. Seth love what you do. Make a Ruckus.

Thank you for this John and I feel your pain and I am so sorry for your loss. The thing about the kind of books that you were talking about and I lost both of my parents to cancer is they don’t sell science. Sometimes they pretend to sell science but what they sell is Hope and the thing Of course, they contradict each other because Hope usually does contradict itself because there isn’t Just One path to belief and if somebody without harming their health, can find a way to control part of their environment, when so many other things in their life feel like they’re out of control.

It’s hard for me to blame the person who wants to buy a book like that, this is not the same. As books or quacks, who tell people, not to get medical care, who tell people to do something instead of proven double-blind, actual studied medicine? No, that’s not my point or I don’t think it’s yours. I think. Instead what we need to do as we each get older and we dance around mortality, and all of the trauma around us is find something to hope for.

And so maybe if I were in your shoes, I would find a lending library. Or some other place where someone who is looking for the kind of Solace, they can get from controlling what they eat. Maybe they could find it in these books. Again, big hugs from me. Hang in there. I know it takes a long time.

Hi Seth I have been blessed by your work for well, over a decade. And first, I just want to say thank you. And in that time nothing has stuck in my head has made me think more than your episode on Modern monetary Theory and the reason is not money. I believe you got the three things. Correct that we need to invest in and education and health care.

And in confidence, but I don’t believe what those three areas need the most is money and you’re actually the one that convinced me to this, that what our education system needs is to answer the question, what is it for? And then to retool around the answer and while we could put ten billion dollars into the current system and we might get a 10% better result out of that.

If we would answer the question, what is it for? We could see a thousand percent. Sent better result and likewise in health care.

The vast majority of illness that we have in the United States is diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol, things which are caused by lifestyle and best addressed by lifestyle changes. And yet, we have a system that prescribes pills and surgery that while they help their much more expensive and much less effective, at solving the problems and what the system needs is to ask the And what is it for?

And then we have confidence. And while monetary Theory. I’m sure effects confidence. Somewhat, it’s extremely small. Compared to the effect that the messaging from our culture has. And it seems that today the dominant message is the world is going to pot and it’s their fault, even though this is untrue, it’s not their fault. The world is going to pot because the world is not going to pot and it can’t be their fault.

And I think what your answer to this would be is well, go change one classroom, go change one person’s self, go change one person’s confidence and use what you learned, use that momentum to change another and another and another. So what is it that we could do that? You could do to change the tide of this messaging from one that’s making the world a worse. Place to a more positive message that will make the world a better place. Thank you for this question, my answer. Probably going to be shorter than the question was, but I let it run because you have so many good points.

The thing is, when we spend money on something, it doesn’t always make it better, but when we cease to spend money on something, it’s often hard to make it better. If we look at the huge progress that has been made and say caffeine delivery devices from Dunkin Donuts, 25 years ago to Starbucks today. If we we look at how so many businesses have piled on and piled on and piled on with their Innovations, with their convenience, has with their quote improvements.

Well, the profit mode is often at work. So yeah, I’m going to answer what you thought I was going to answer which is I wasn’t saying we should put money into the broken system, particularly the medical and Educational Systems in my country more money for the old system isn’t going to fix it. But if A central Authority, who isn’t simply seeking to enrich tiny corners of the market but is willing to embrace efficacy. The same way, a focus on efficacy led to a groundbreaking record-breaking Sprint to not one, not two, but three or more vaccines, in less than a year.

We can do the same thing with school. We can do the same thing with health care. If there are people in those systems, you need to be bought out of the To create open space for new better systems to happen. Well, then go ahead and do it. It doesn’t make sense for the people in those systems to suffer, simply because someone has a sinecure.

We’ve learned so much about health care and education in the last hundred years. But too often we do precisely the opposite of what we need to do. Because entrenched bureaucratic interests who make money from existing systems are hard to unin Trench. But we can do it. Particularly if we have a focus and the resources to do something about it, and just to put a sharp point on it, I want to clarify something Central authorities, whether they are Central media, personalities, Gatekeepers, or governments with pocketbooks, don’t fix anything. All by themselves, things, get fixed invented. Improved questioned at the fringes. It’s at the fringes in small circles where Human beings are making choices choices about, who to listen to choices about what to buy choices about what to stand for, and choices about how to improve their institutions. These are where the signals always begin. The question is not, can we give Authority away and responsibility to some Central Authority? Because I think that’s been shown not to work instead. The opportunity is to say it’s on us to figure out how to build culture. We are proud of and it’s On whatever Central Authority were talking about commercial or governmental to amplify this stuff that works.

We can do things like fix policing, like, fix bumpy roads in things like the economy, we can do it.

If we care enough to say, we’re going to do it as opposed to wringing our hands and just waiting for the free market to fix the problem because the free market hasn’t fixed the problem. And in so many places, it’s made it worse. So quite a few rants To wrap up this week’s show. Thank you all for listening be. Well here’s to Peace of Mind possibility and dignity, we’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better. Other than the internet, right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. Icy out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA. More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-magnification-of-small-differences- <==

Every year in China, 10 million high school students sit down for a two or three-day test that will make or break their future. The gaokao is the single indicator that is used to determine who is going to get into a selective college and who isn’t who is going to move forward and who is going to be left behind.

Hey it’s Seth and this Is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about how a tiny difference of just the point, can be magnified into something that changes everything. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor Creative isn’t who you are. It’s what you do along. The way creativity has gotten a mystical rap as if it’s some sort of gift. It’s not. It’s a choice. It’s a skill.

If you have a job where you get to decide what you do, you are a creative, it work in creative and you can get better at it. I’m thrilled to say that the creatives workshop is back the most. Active of all the akimbo workshops. It’s about people who want to level up and make a difference with their creative. Work. I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming workshops.

Go make a ruckus. Everywhere we look in our modern world, we are seeing the magnification of small differences, just a couple points on the SAT determines, whether or not someone gets into a famous college, that helps make a difference as to whether or not they got into a famous law school. Then effort combined with luck determines whether they made law review or just missed it.

Making law, review helps them get a clerkship for a federal judge. Not making law review. Makes that really difficult. A clerkship. A federal judge is magnified into the fast track and then maybe one day you end up on the Supreme Court all because of a six-point difference on your SATs. Of course it’s not all because of this but it is a magnification process.

Something that we’ve been doing for a long time to sort people out think about the movies during the last decade or so Hollywood released two movies a week. Two wide distribution, just a hundred movies a year. They pick such a small number of movies with tens of thousands, in some level of development. They pick a hundred because they say, a, we need money to be able to make movies be.

We need money to promote the movies. And see, there. Aren’t that many movie theaters to go into wide release? We need to be in a lot of theaters. Is and there aren’t that many. So scarcity drives, the fact that there is scarcity scarce money, scarce ability to pay attention, scarce theaters to put the movies in, even Netflix, which has an infinite number of theaters.

Only released 371 titles or episodes in 2019 371 dwarfs the movie industry but has nothing in common. With the tens of thousands of screenplays that are just waiting to get picked. But in you’re probably ahead of me now. There are other areas in our culture in which humans Venture in which there is no scarcity.

Amazon doesn’t want to tell us how many books there are on the Kindle but there are more than 5 million of them. There are 1700 new Kindle books published every single day. That Pretty much a hundred every waking hour, why don’t they want to tell us how many books there are on the Kindle or think about how many acrylic paintings were poems, are written every year?

No one’s even counting that, but there’s got to be more than a billion. Does the fact that no one can stop you from writing a poem? Make it more likely that you will write a poem. So, there’s an interesting balance here between Scarcity and value last year, 30,000 nurse practitioners, graduated nurse practitioners are capable of writing prescriptions in dealing directly with patients, without a doctor, 30,000 nurse practitioners in the United States is about one in 10,000 numbers of people who need a nurse practitioner. That number is laughably small, the typical nurse practitioner sees, three patients an hour and makes a hundred and ten. Thousand dollars a year.

What would happen if we had enough nurse practitioners that nurse practitioners solve for patients, an hour or five patients in an hour and maybe made $100,000 a year instead, or what if we went in the other direction and the only saw two patients, an hour, giving them focused, dedicated time and made, I don’t know, $80,000 a year, the point is, we’re not running out of patience, but we We are out of nurse practitioners.

So, what is it? That makes somebody want to make a movie, but makes them. Perhaps hesitate when no one stops them from making a Kindle book. Well, it’s scarcity at some level in our culture that creates value. So now we go back to the gaokao, 10 million people who took a test all at once in June of 2020, they didn’t take the test because of the panda. Mick.

But it’s interesting to note that going forward, online education may make it so that there is no such thing as scarce spaces at a selective College. Unless we want there to be, let’s think for a minute about the organizations that are credit higher education, ostensibly created, to make sure that the quality was there.

That’s not really what they do. They enforce, for example, how many phds there are Per student, but if the purpose of a college is to teach people, there is no evidence zero. That phds are better at that. Then people who are simply good at teaching. Now having a ratio of phds per student, simply makes it harder to start and run a university.

Lots of the things that are in place at an accrediting institution exists, to limit the number of things that are getting accredited. How do they decide how many people will pass? The bar exam? When the lawyers take it in California? Well, it’s not the absolute value of their score. It’s how many lawyers are they prepared to make this year in California?

It’s well-known that it’s really hard to pass. The bar in places like Hawaii, where lawyers would like to go and retire, but pretty easy to pass the bar in states that have a shortage of lawyers. Because the bar, Sam is not a measure of, are you? Good enough to be a lawyer? It’s simply a barrier to make sure that there’s scarcity, so that people will value It. Go on the journey and want to be a lawyer in the first place.

And so, the long tail collides head, first into the power law curve, the power law curve, otherwise known as zipf’s law points out that the ones all the way to the left, two hits, they get a lot of attention and Way down at the other end of the curve. As Chris Anderson has pointed out, is the long tail, the long tail. When you add it up, is just as big as the short head, but the attention paid to every single individual on the long tail is small. Indeed, if you release a song on iTunes or Spotify, if you write a book on the Kindle almost no one is going to read it if your movie gets greenlit for wide release after the pandemic, Eric far more people are going to see it because their scarcity, there’s an enforced short head. Just two movies a week and so we have a choice to make as we create online learning as we create more and more long tails, and the choice is, will we as human seek to do poetry, or acrylic, painting or Kindle books?

Things were no one can stop us. Or will we devote you? Amounts of our time and energy into hoping for the magnification of small differences because there’s a real problem with the magnification of small differences. And the problem is we waste potential. We waste potential because someone who’s almost good enough to qualify for the Olympics doesn’t and then they don’t develop, they don’t get the coaching. They don’t get all the other things. That would have helped them, get to the next level.

We waste potential because at the age of two or three or four, we look at someone based on who their parents are, what their race is, where they grew up, and we don’t give them the attention that they need to get to the next level. And so by the time, the quote selective High School is looking for potential students to magnify their small differences. There are already one to three percent behind with no hope of catching up and so to get specific I don’t think it’s difficult for any of us to imagine that just five years from now.

There’s an automated series artificially, intelligence-driven of courses of learning of Education that exist online that anybody with internet access to wants to could put themselves through and that it will be shown. I am certain that going through this accredits, you better than going to one of those other institutions. It makes you actually better at whatever thing we were just just sorting for that. If you are willing to go through the grueling effort of using this process, you will come out at the other end knowing more than the hand-built process.

And given that an online interaction scales to Infinity, given that the shelves of the Kindle will never be filled, are we okay with that? Or are we more comfortable? Embracing the mythology of the magnification? Small differences. One last practice, To go far on this for years and years. Google used a mysterious algorithm to decide who would rank high in the Google results.

And what we know is that you are a hundred times more likely to get clicked on if you’re on the first page of Google results, then if you’re on the third page. Now let’s remember that for any valuable search, there’s more than a thousand pages of results. So there’s a thousand pages of results and almost every click goes to the First page, the people on the first page, the web sites on the first page might be what .01% better than the websites that are on the fifth page.

Better at what better by what metric. It’s a mystery, they won’t tell us but what happens is the people who locked into the first page whether through SEO or just good fortune, get more traffic, more traffic gets the more resources. More resources, lets them invest more and more in whatever it took.

To get on that front page, and the process continues and continues until power, accrues to both Google because they get to dictate the algorithm. And the people who run those sites on the front page, what would have happened if instead of Google showing the front page to everybody. Showed the first page to I don’t know. Ten percent of the people who visited any search and the second page to 9% and the third beige Day present do the math. Anyway, you want What they could have done this, they could have easily randomized and minimized.

The difference of small differences but instead they decided to magnify them because it gave them power because it made everyone pay attention to their mysterious algorithm. And so we’re looking right now at a world torn between building more choke points, even though they are artificial and embracing the long tail even though it offers Less in the way of scarcity. And thus value there isn’t one obvious answer, but when we think about the nurse practitioners, it seems to me that what we ought to be defaulting to is amplifying potential.

How do we find more and more people who can figure out how to make a living doing something that benefits our community? And then strip away all the artificial barriers that keep that number small and instead say, what would happen if they were as plentiful as poems? What would happen if there were plenty of people doing health care or working on Mental Health, in our community, or helping with Food Supplies, go down the list, we can do that. If we figure out how to make the long tail attractive enough to get the right people to embrace it, thanks for listening, this was quite a ramp, we’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from Last time. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp, an independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.com. Go to find out about their new Upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. My name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new pump.

This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey Sun. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question. By my calculations, this is episode 200 of akimbo and it wouldn’t be possible without my producer Alex De Palma.

And without you, thank you for showing up week after week, year after year. This is clearly a labor of love. I hope that comes through and if you’re loving it, that makes it worth it. So with that said, as you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit Akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M. Bo dot link2sd.

Click the appropriate button. We’ve got three really. Surprisingly juicy questions this week. Here we go. I see it. This is Bill. Hikes in Austin. Said I have been struggling with the question of does it work? Or is it working in relation to my project and yesterday during a walk? I had a real insight that I wanted to share with you and ask a question about The fact of the matter is the my project is working for me, is consistent with who I am.

It’s making a difference in the world and it is inside of a context of a business model that I found to be successful before. So my question is, is you think my inside is valid? I mean is it working? Well is it working for me is something that makes a big difference in my desire to keep this project alive.

So thank you for all the work you do. Bye. Thanks for this bill. The market economy is fascinating because markets are sensing mechanisms markets are voluntary. Interactions in which people who need or want something show up and connect with someone who has something to offer markets fall apart when things like monopolists show up where people don’t have a choice but markets aren’t the reason we do our work. That sometimes It seems like the only things that some people think are worth doing, are things that make a lot of money as if money profit is the only measure of utility.

Well, if you think about someone who runs a small well in a small village, they might not be making a lot of money, but if they disappeared, people would notice immediately. Their work is vitally important, but that doesn’t mean they’re making a fortune on the other. And someone who’s making a luxury good say some crazy nft and earns 50 million dollars from selling some digital file. They may have made a lot of money there may be a market for what they made but it’s not clear to me or to most people that what they did was more important than running a well that provides water to keep people alive in a small village. So your question is it working is super important.

And you are correct working for who, if you’re doing something that you believe in, but the market doesn’t want to engage with you. You have to acknowledge the fact that it’s not working for them because if it was working for them in the way, you told your story delivered, your product or service, priced it etcetera, they’d buy it.

On the other hand, if you’re doing something that you’re not proud of, it’s making a lot of money. Well, then it’s not working for you. So thank you for your plain-spoken clear way to help people understand it. Sometimes we keep track of precisely the wrong things, and that engaging with the market to do our work is Balancing Act between giving people something that they value and doing something that we value.

Hi, Seth, Kathy and Michigan. I enjoyed your helmet. Episode horseback riding injuries at one point in time. Where I high on the number of emergency room admissions in the summer. And in Rodeo, we can still see where only a limited number of participants wear helmets in the show Horse World. There were bitter debates about helmets, many deaths and traumatic brain injuries when helmets became compulsory.

Then the status thing was to have the $800, Swarovski, Crystal, and studded helmet question for you is, can you comment on an even more compelling opt-in? Option would be here, are your helmets and the price is included. And then the second question is, is the next Frontier fall protection for seniors.

Atul, gawande is being mortal and fine driving. Miss Norma are two books that talked about concussion and hip injuries. Taking many cognitively sharp seniors out of the game.

Thanks for your comments, thanks for this Kathy and I really appreciate your leadership. The thing about helmets is very similar to the thing about vaccines, which is similar to the thing about seat belts, which is to, you can go on and on It’s always about fear, there’s different kinds of fear. Some people get a vaccine because they are afraid of getting sick and dying or because they are afraid of infecting someone else.

Other people decide not to get a vaccine based on false information appearing real because they are afraid of either. How it will make them feel to get one or how it will affect their standing in the society that they are keeping track of. And so the thing about helmets and other interventions for seniors comes down to this idea of fear that sooner or later, most of us realize, we’re going to die.

And most of the time we live in community, seniors are too often isolated, but even when they’re slightly isolated, they’re still seen by others. And in the face of that, some people deal with their fear of the Unknown, by trying to outfit them. Elves in a way that will help them live longer that wearing. A helmet is obvious for someone like this taking, their meds makes perfect sense. But other people, either to avoid a dialogue monologue with themselves about this fear or to send a signal to others. What will they say? If I wear this helmet? That might get in the way of someone doing something that they need to do. So part of the job of marketing and Communications Culture is to create clear and easy to follow Pathways so that people end up doing things that they’re glad they did in high school.

The fear of getting left out, might drive someone to start smoking. No one I’ve ever met said, I smoked one cigarette and I really enjoyed it. People don’t smoke cigarettes because they like it. They do it in the long run because they’re addicted and they do it in the short run because of social pressure. Sure and social pressure is a cultural artifact and we have to figure out what are we pressuring people to do?

And what we pressuring people to not do and part of what we need to itemize are the things that will help them and us live in community. So I know that that’s not quite the answer to your question, but here it is. When in doubt, look for the fear. Hey, you said that Zach calling from New Hampshire. Thank you for the work and the insight. Right, that you provide to so many of us.

My question today, is, how do you think about the idea of burnout? Somebody who works in the nonprofit sector? I interface a lot with Educators Community Based organizations and it feels like everyone right now is exhausted and I’m not quite sure what to do about it. So have you ever felt burnout is burnt out even the right word that we should be using to describe this this feeling of exhaustion because Only this work feels exciting and inspiring. But for whatever reason, right now, everybody isn’t feeling that you’re feeling tired. So curious, what thoughts are in sight? You might provide. Thank you, thank you for this, exact. Thanks for the work that you are doing a burnout is real. For sure.

It’s interesting, though, that farmers don’t get burnout from actually plowing the fields if they get burned out at all, they get it from the stress of Having commitments, having payments, do having things that should grow not growing. In fact, it’s when they’re dealing with the uncertain with the things out of their control.

It’s when the universe doesn’t align with what they were hoping for that. A certain special kind of stress shows up and this is the stress of wanting to do two things. At the same time, stay and run away succeed or face. What’s actually happening around us. And this stress is enervating, it can undermine so much of our mental health and one of the thing that’s happening post, pandemic, having survived over a year in this state of limbo?

Is it? Lots of people are exhausted? We’re not exhausted because we’re not well rested. We had plenty of time to sit in our house and do very little sleeping at night. We weren’t racing to catch airplanes. We weren’t running marathons. No, we’re not. Physically exhausted, we’re emotionally exhausted. Because what’s happening around us as the result of our labor, our wishes, our hopes, our dreams isn’t matching the expectations. We had set out for it and so, yeah, I experienced burn out all the time and sometimes worse than others, but I try to get back on track, not by forcing the world to do what I want to do.

But by digging in deeper Upon accepting what is actually happening right in front of me? Because acceptance being able to play the cards that we were dealt being able to lean into possibility at the very same time. We don’t try to undo the past or even the present reality that is a path forward because it turns out that whatever, turns out is going to turn out and we can influence it, but our mental Cycles are telekinesis.

That is just going to exhaust us. So what we’re going to need to do is to figure out what we can lean into with leverage and how we can productively accept the things. We can’t change. Thanks everybody for listening. It’s been 200, fun episodes and I’m thrilled to be on this ride with you. Keep making a Ruckus, we’ll see you next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an So, institution, or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got Access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide. You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t Know where we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -fractions- <==

More than a year ago. When the pandemic hit, I knew that we were going to need four things. If we were going to get through this together, we would need a spirit of generosity. We would need patience, we would need discipline and we need people to understand fractions. Well, maybe we can get three out of four, but the purpose of this podcast is to help you with the fourth one.

Hey, it’s Seth. And this is akimbo, will be back in a second to talk about something that most people don’t understand, but that’s not that hard fractions. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor creative isn’t who you are. It’s what you do along. The way creativity has gotten, Mystical rap as if it’s some sort of gift. It’s not. It’s a choice. It’s a skill.

If you have a job where you get to decide what you do, you are a creative, it work in creative and you can get better at it. I’m thrilled to say that the creatives workshop is back the most active of all the akimbo workshops. It’s about people who want to level up and make a difference with their creative work. I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com, go for all. The upcoming workshops go make a ruckus.

In a previous episode, I talked about the tragedy of exaggerating small differences that when we expose large groups of people to supposedly rigorous tests based on supposed scarcity and pick the few that supposedly measure just a little bit better. We don’t make things any better. We make them worse because small differences aren’t worth exaggerating.

However when it comes Two percentages, which is just a form of a fraction. We’re doing the opposite and we do the opposite all the time. I put up a spreadsheet at akimbo Link in the show notes, you can find it there but you don’t need to look at a spreadsheet to understand what we’re going to go over today.

You don’t even need to stop driving. It comes down to two questions that I wanted to select the first one is this. Some people say, Say, why should we bother with an intervention that has a 90% success rate, when 99% of the people recover on their own? Well, first of all, 99, percentage of people may not die but we have no idea how long the after-effects of covid are. But, I’ll Grant you 99%. Let’s just use that as a number right now to start understanding, what happens when we do percentage. That percentage is what happens when fractions bump into fractions.

If 99% of the people recover, that means that once everyone in the u.s. is Afflicted with covid at some level or another, which will happen. Thanks to epidemiology. We know this. That means that approximately 3 million Americans will die. That’s a huge number if any other disease or meteorite strike had Add a number like that, everyone would be paying attention.

99% sounds like a great survival rate unless you’re one of the one percent. Okay, so now we say, but it doesn’t matter if there’s a 90% efficacy rate if 99% of the people recover. Well, when we start looking at fractions, it feels like that’s appropriate, but it’s not what you have to do. Is not compare fractions to one another.

You have to look at the base. So if we’ve got Million people in a population and of course, around the earth, it’s far, far more than that. I’m just picking the country where I know the numbers off the top of my head and for people in other places, particularly India, who are so under this, my heart goes out to you, but for now we’re going to say 99% if we have an intervention like a vaccine that has a 90% efficacy. Let’s just use the number 90 percent again. We’re not exactly sure, but 90%, % feels lower than my hunch.

What does that mean? It means that instead of three million people dying 300,000 people would die. It’s a 10x increase. It means that we are able to save the lives of two point seven million people. Because once you do the first bit of math the 90% then you have to do the second bit of math the 99% on the people who Left and only by multiplying it out on the addressed population. Can you get to the truth of who is affected? And who isn’t? It is a no-brainer. Even if it has a 50% efficacy rate, it is a no-brainer, it is one of the greatest medical interventions in human history.

If you can come up with a 50% efficacy rate on something that has a 99 percent survival rate, Okay, second question. That arrived in my inbox this morning, someone said to me, why should I bother getting the second vaccine? If it’s only going to increase the efficacy, by 15% to go from 80% to 95%, why bother with the second shot?

And the way many people are thinking about this is simple. If you get an 80% in a course you don’t like in school, it’s fine, don’t sweat it 80%, don’t worry about it. Going to 95% not worth the extra time, 80% is good enough but again, let’s do the numbers. If there’s 1,000 people in your town and there’s an 80% efficacy rate, it means 200, people are going to get sick.

If there’s a 95% efficacy rate, it means that 50 people are going to get sick from 200-250. So when we go from 80 to 95 percent, we’re not going up by 15%. Sent, we’re coming up with an intervention that is four times more beneficial to the population for time. If we could go to 99%, wow at 99% we go from 200 210, the math speaks for itself, there are two problems, the public has with public health, the first one is science, doesn’t look good. When you look at it in real time that if you look at all of the work that went into In the polio vaccine.

Well let’s go left. Let’s go, right, let’s go up, let’s go down. Oh finally, we found it. We forget all of that after science has demonstrated its method, it’s a little bit like driving around your neighborhood. The first week after you move in, you get lost all the time and then after a few weeks you know exactly where you’re going.

The problem with science being on the front page of the newspaper. Every day is simple. We’re getting to see how it’s made and science is about failing and failing. And Failing on our way to getting it, right? And then the second problem that Youmans have with public health, is it Public Health, by its nature deals with very large numbers of people?

People who might not be you in any given situation over longer periods of time and it involves fractions. And so Public Health gets us fluoridated Water Public, Health, gets a sewers Public, Health gets us, the The doctor should wash their hands before they do surgery. Public health is a miracle. If you could trade places with somebody from 1800 or 1600 or 1400 or yes, a thousand years ago, you’d freak out in about 30 seconds because public health is one of the triumphs of our time and we take it all for granted and the folks who do Public Health along with epidemiologists, they understand things like are not and fractions and the normal distribution and percentages and large populations. And the fact that 80 year olds are not the same as 20 year olds though, they might end up breathing the same air.

So I am not asking anybody to take these folks at their word, I’m asking them to do the math because the math speaks for itself.

Thanks for listening, here’s to Good Health, optimism and possibility. We’ll see you next time, we’ll be back in the Second with a couple questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility.

Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together. It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at akimbo are up to visit, akimbo.com, go to find out about their new Upcoming workshops and how it all works.

Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is on the part of the scale. Entire sir warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex whoosah. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I love to hear from you. If you got a question about this or any previous episode about, fractions about marketing about status, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006. Click the appropriate button to questions about status this week. They couldn’t be more different, and they couldn’t be more like, hey, Seth is Brandon from Montreal.

The question I have for you is how can we use status rolls to better allocate the talent of our Work on meaningful problems. There’s two thoughts that came to mind as I thought about this question. The first one is the way it how this generation is a lot less likely to want to work in the government.

Whereas that’s a very important sector where people need to take jobs in and we’re losing a lot of our best talent to other areas in other professions that the culture incentivizes us to do and rewards as for it like being offended financier on Wall Street, like being a lawyer. Like being a doctor, that’s one piece. The other piece, is how the culture, doesn’t particularly promote Blue Collar jobs either as a very good way to make a living, as a way to move up the status role. As you argue in many of your episodes, like being an electrician or being a plumber.

So, going back to this, how how do you think we can use status roles to better allocate the talent of our societies that we can work on meaningful problems and get things solved looking for it again, your thoughts? Thanks so much that. Thank you for this. It’s a really important. Didn’t incite and I think it’s worth a minute to understand how we got here, because 500 years ago, money hardly was a guarantee of status.

Perhaps you were in the clergy, perhaps you were a soldier in ancient Sparta. Perhaps you were royalty. These weren’t things that came from money. No money might come to you because you had this sort of status perhaps you were the most important. N’t woman in the village, perhaps you were the best athlete. There’s lots of things that give human beings status and money is a fairly new one.

Here’s the thing that money has going for it. That’s being repeated over and over again by The Chieftains of public companies who are being paid millions and millions of dollars a month. And by places, like Goldman Sachs that move money from one pile to another the Pretty simple which is there’s only one dimension Milton Friedman, told us what it is make as much money as possible.

It doesn’t matter if that person is immoral or unethical. Doesn’t matter if they cheat doesn’t matter if they’re tall, it doesn’t matter if they know how to play Billiards. All that matters is that they made a lot of money that we have been brainwashed into believing that rich and good where that rich and high status, might be the same thing and then we overlay on that. At celebrity, which is also brand-new hundred. Two hundred years old and celebrity often gets rewarded with money money.

Sometimes gets rewarded with celebrity and again, it’s just on one axis. Well current events, A Renewed, overdue focus on social justice, and treating people fairly on behavior in the workplace is waking up. A lot of people and they’re saying well maybe it’s not sufficient that you made a lot of money. So the pendulum swings one way or another, but to get to your question, the challenge is to elevate people who have made this selfless decision to do service and not to always add an asterisk to it about. Whether it’s enough service about whether they’re perfect enough about whether their entire background is without reproach. You’d have to be crazy to run for mayor or Senator or president or We’re or Member of Parliament because the media is just waiting to eat you up. It doesn’t matter that you’re doing real lot of good. What matters is you’re not perfect and none of us are. I’m certainly not.

And so, the challenge and the way we get around the challenge is, by going out of our way, to see and to elevate people who are doing things for the right reason who are doing things with care and kindness to make things better for People around them, not simply the short-term interests of their shareholders.

I don’t have a magic wand or I can’t just wave my hand and tell you how we can fix this. What I can say is the culture gets what it rewards and we need to figure out how to make it. So that Yale students don’t think the thing they’re supposed to do is go to Wall Street, and we have to figure out how to create cycles of when we talk about what we do at a cocktail party, the people who are actually doing something that Benefits more of us, get more of our attention. So thank you for noticing it and all I can hope is that one of the side effects, the byproducts of this Interruption, this tragedy, we’ve all been living through is that maybe we’re going to take a deep breath and measure something else.

Hi, Seth. My name is Pat Kelly and I run a wedding music and DJ company in the Philadelphia. Pennsylvania USA area and my twin brother and I perform live music and DJ For weddings and in listening to two different episodes that you have a wedding industrial complex and then the episode called a complex of complex has more recently.

I had two questions for you. Number one, we run a boutique wedding service and we really focus on the creative side of what we do and the artist side of what we do. And that attracts a lot of couples that like what we do. So number one, how do we attract more Artists and more creatives that want to do something similar.

How do we build groups of people that want to enter the wedding industry, even knowing that they might have to perform or play some music that they might not necessarily choose to but knowing that they would be able to make a living much better than maybe other sides of the music industry overall. And number two, how do we grow a company in a complex?

Because there are complexes that we all know of but growing a company in something that is big and, you know, has a lot of moving parts and that we don’t necessarily understand all of it. How do we grow a company in a complex without losing the essence of who we are? And what we do, I appreciate all that you do.

I appreciate the time that you take to answer these questions and have a great day. So yes you’ve guessed it. This is another question about status and to restate it, why would a musician hesitate to play weddings? If it’s going to help them make a living? And the answer is, they didn’t become a musician to make a living.

They they became a musician because they were looking for a certain kind of status. So, how would I reverse engineer this? Well, maybe I would use a little bit of the profit you organization makes to put on a multiband Third on a regular basis now that we’re getting out of our homes and maybe the only people who are allowed to perform at this prestigious Nightclub at this outdoor Festival. The only ones you invite to perform or the ones who also gig with your agency or somebody else who’s doing weddings that the price of being seen of getting on your sampler record of being promoted on Spotify of having a live crowd bigger than you’re used to the Price is you also have to pay your dues by playing weddings.

You’re not going to be able to elevate the status of the wedding band. That’s too much work for one organization, but you might be able to do is Elevate the status of musicians, who care enough about their work to also gig at weddings. And my hunch is that this might lead to more gigs for all of you because what many people who are getting married look for. When they’re doing, they’re insanely expensive weddings is celebrity and so if you have celebrity bands because you made them celebrities, they might be even easier for you to book.

And as for working within a complex, once you see the complex, you are working with the complex and that plays into exactly what you need.

So, you look around and say what do the floors? What do the bride’s want? What did the groom’s want? What does the mother, or the parent of the Bride want? What does the venue want everybody in this system wants something? And if you make it easy for them to get what they want, there are significantly more likely to do business with you.

Almost every shift that we have seen in the wedding industrial complex has happened because whoever brought that shift forward did it in a way that helped so many of the other. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

There is no great thought leader, who can outthink the internet, like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you In a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas, you got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide. You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason. Why. Why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-practical-ethics-of-the-jet-ski- <==

In 1960 around the time that Tater Tots came on the scene Arthur, Julius introduced his new invention at the National Restaurant show. It was wet naps and history was being made. Hey it’s Seth and this is akimbo we’ll be back in a second to talk about jet skis. Leaded gas and flushable wipes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

Hi, spend it at you. And I’m here to talk to you about, how you can become a better. Storyteller storytelling is not an art reserved for the Chosen Few. It’s a skill that you can learn just like the students have taken part in the story skills. Workshop of done, actually I had a story to tell that was really important for me.

But also was going to be very, very important for people in the future. It’s been absolutely life-changing for me to see stories everywhere and to see my own stories. I was surprised that the learning was as much in the giving as in the receiving, we got to not only learn about storytelling. We actually got to practice using stories in our everyday life.

If you’re ready to become a better Storyteller. I hope you’ll join us. I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a Ruckus. The wet nap was originally invented so that you could clean your hands after you ate ribs at a roadside joint, but it grew too many things. It includes baby wipes, and of course, flushable wipes.

Last year, sewer systems government agencies around the world spent more than a billion dollars. Cleaning Yup. From the side effects of people using flushable wipes. They create fatbergs giant. Glaciers stuck in the sewer system that caused enormous amounts of damage and yet people persist in using flushable wipes.

Okay, let’s go sideways for a minute. Clayton Jacobson in the 1960s was a motorcycle driver. He loved fast bikes. He liked hanging out on the beach with his friends. And he wanted to find a way to combine the beach, with motorcycling, putting together, a two-stroke engine, and some Ingenuity. He invented what ended up becoming the jet ski before that he license, his patents to Bombardier, the people who make snowmobiles, they figured it’s a snowmobile for the water, will give it a try, but then Yamaha came along, built the jet ski and for more than a dozen years. They dominated the market.

What about jet skis? Well, a jet ski gets about three miles per gallon in fuel efficiency and is as loud as a 737 jet.

I live about a mile from the beautiful Hudson River and on a quiet summer evening. It’s not hard at all a mile away to hear people racing their jet. Skis getting 3 miles per And racing through the Hudson, River causing, who knows what damage to the ecosystem. Okay, continuing we’ve got people on jet skis, we’ve got people with flushable wipes.

What about Thomas? Midgley, jr. I’ve mentioned him before he invented two things that changed the world. He invented leaded gas, which caused countless birth defects and illnesses around the world. And he also invented Freon gas, which powered air conditioners. And ripped a giant hole in the ozone layer.

So what do all of these things have in common? What they have in common is the problem with unchecked unregulated profit-seeking capitalism that because a company can make something that is legal and profitable sometimes they do and because individuals sometimes want to do something that is in their short-term interest regardless of whether helps or hurts their neighbors, sometimes they do, it’s not against the law, the feeling is, it’s okay to do it and if you live on a quiet Lake and somebody starts zooming around on a jet ski well at some point you say there goes to quiet, I might as well get one too and so the system begins to corrode in the case of flushable wipes, literally corrodes that what happens is every Single individual has a selfish short term incentive to go get these fairly inexpensive products that make their personal life just a little bit easier.

They don’t have to suffer all of the costs of their habit because it is shared by everyone in the population and want to everyone in the population looks around. And says, wait a minute, if I’m already paying to get these fatbergs removed from our sewers, I might as well join in as well. And so, in this short rant, what I’m trying to highlight is that while capitalists doing what they think is their part to profit maximize while consumers thinking they are doing their part by buying, what is in their interest in that moment, there is a third leg to the stool. We cannot and it has been demonstrated again. And again, get by with just two parts, we can’t build a sustainable resilient culture in which individuals do what they want for short-term benefit and which companies sell what they want for short-term profit.

The third leg is collective action that when we as a group decide, we’re going to ban Freon gas, we all suffer, the short term consequences of looking for an alternative that maybe isn’t as efficient, maybe isn’t as an expensive. But what we end up with for the long term, as a Chur is an ozone layer that doesn’t have a hole ripped in it.

When we banned leaded gas, people said we will never recover cars, will knock and not drive as well. Here, our Engineers are studying exhaust condensates that indicate the effects of tetraethyl lead, Engineers study these things in the laboratory. They study them out of the road to in passenger cars and trucks through tests under various kinds of rigid control situations.

The instruments in this test car, indicate and graphically record information on such factors as horsepower, fuel consumption, speed spark setting, that’s the way mechanical engineers working with chemists arrive, at conclusions, which result in better and better engine performances.

Well, it didn’t take that long and every consumer paid a small price, but in the long run, we all saved because illness went down. And so, for example, when we think about the jetski, the question is, should a few people be able to exercise their freedom to drive a A personal Boeing 737 airliner around on a lake or a river.

Causing hundreds thousands, tens of thousands of people to hear what they’re doing. Should they be allowed to have a two stroke motor that dumps? Effluent straight into the river with the fish that we hope will Thrive there? Well, it’s not against the law. So should they, should we rely on consumers to just do what’s right for everyone?

And companies when companies decide to Market something like the significant flush wipe industry, should that industry get together and fight government regulation. They are profiting from the fact that municipalities have to pay money. Our money tax, money to fix the sewers to clean things up. Is that a symmetric relationship appropriate? Or is it? Okay for Collective action, all of us.

To decide that the commons belong to all of us and to regulate who can use them in which way. And the thing about this conversation, the thing that makes it so interesting is that both extremes don’t work. We cannot regulate every single Choice, every purchase, every Behavior can’t be done. People have tried, it doesn’t work, but at the other end of the extreme, there is no threat. In culture on the planet that doesn’t already regulate behaviors of people that affect other people.

Every successful organized culture does this. So it’s not, are you on this extreme or that extreme? It’s where do we set the dial? How do we decide as a culture? Which behaviors which contributions, which takings are so asymmetrical and noxious that? We have to make a rule About them. And if we’re going to make a rule about them, collectively, how much of a voice should the manufacturers have in helping us make that rule that the cost of banning flushable wipes? For example, will largely fall on the Dozen manufacturers who make millions and millions of dollars a year selling them to people the individuals who might have to pay an extra dollar or two or ten or Twenty a year to find a substitute.

They Actually coming out ahead because their taxes are going to go down at least as much as their expenditures on something to replace. Flushable wipes, will go up. But the manufacturers they have a really significant incentive and as we’ve created cultures around the world, where manufacturers industrialists was incentives, are able to use money and lobbying to change the government’s Behavior.

We have an unfair fight and so we end up deregulating things that probably should be regulated. I for one am glad we don’t have leaded gas. I’m glad that Freon gas has been replaced. I’m glad that we’ve got at least a little bit more time to straighten up our climate mess. But when I sit on my back porch and I hear the jet skis, roaring a mile away that sound like a 737 or when I think about the hard-working people in the sewer whoo-hoo, Clean up those fatbergs because individuals left to their own devices often seek to maximize their own short-term gains.

Then I wonder if we’re doing a good enough job of making decisions about what all of us are going to do on behalf of all of us. So that’s a rant. I don’t have a specific answer but I thought I’d ask the question. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with some questions from Previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo. Cam go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Accept my name is Kyle reading sound. This is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is on the Pain Scale. Entire sir warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex whoosah. Hi. This is Russell Aishwarya Rai. This is Roberta Perry. My question is And that completes my question as you know, I love to hear from you. If you got questions about this or any previous episode, please visit akimbo link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2sd.

Click the appropriate button while you’re there. You can check out the show notes. Some weeks are deeper than others. A couple questions this week. Here we go. I said it’s John in the past. I’ve submitted questions here referring to myself. As John from Boston. But I’m actually from Arlington, Massachusetts a town, right? Outside of Boston, moving forward, would it make more sense from a brand standpoint to refer to myself as John from Arlington? Because it’s more specific or is John from Boston since more folks nationally and globally of heard of Boston.

I’m thinking about this in terms of your great saying that you can either fit in or stand out but not both and I’m also thinking about it in terms of my broader professional Pursuits. For example I consider myself The policy analyst in a system sneaker and I’m wondering if I should push myself more as a policy analyst, which many folks have heard of or is a systems thinker which is a bit more Niche.

Thanks so much for everything you do. Thanks for this John, I’m from Arlington to well, not born and raised there but I lived there for years and years. I remember the sandwich shop in the middle of town. I used to live right next to the volunteer fire department, which was a problem because they tested their horn, every Saturday at 6 a.m.

but that’s neither here nor there. I think the key the answer to both of the points you raised is this differentiation is selfish going out of our way, to Simply Be Different, doesn’t solve anybody’s problems. What we have instead is the opportunity to be generous and useful by talking about what we do where we’re from, how we do it in a way that helps the other person.

And so one of the That we get when we tell somebody where we’re from is a chance for shared experience your, from Arlington on from Arlington. Do you know Bob have you ever eaten at Luigi’s? You get the idea that’s why we do it. It’s a way of indicating something that we might have in common or something that we might not have in common with the person that we are talking with being distinctive in service of something in service of somebody else’s problems.

Nothing wrong with that. That that’s really helpful but being distinctive simply to be noisy, doesn’t really help and that gets to the thing you want to introduce yourself. As if the person you’re talking to doesn’t know what a systems thinker is doesn’t care. What a systems thinker isn’t doesn’t need a systems. Thinker saying your systems thinker is basically saying you don’t want to talk about what I do on the other hand, if you can introduce somebody to what you do, In a way that helps them, understand how you could be of use to them or to someone else.

Well, then you’ve got a shot at helping them at serving them as having dinner with a friend last night. And I said, well what you really do for a living, is your a weaver. And they looked at me a little side eye. And I said, yeah, you’re a weaver. You weave together, people and ideas, and opportunities.

And many of the folks, you meet need somebody who’s a weaver. If you tell them that your assistance, think are in strategy consultant that might not help because they might not have woken up this morning thinking that, that’s what they need, but if you can, honestly share with them insights and possibilities about how they can move forward and get to where they’re going, then you have a shot at actually being of service.

Hey sir, this is Cal from Chicago. My question is about to Cohen vaccine probability and risk. Going in my read based on your tone, whenever the vaccine has come up during recent episodes that you have protectively. Thank everyone who has access to the vaccine should sign up to receive it as soon as possible.

I’m not anti vaccine, I’m no expert but having done some digging into the data. My sense is that it’s over all safe at least in terms of the short term that leads us directly to the limitation. You don’t have any way of knowing the long-term effects even here. My best guess is that there’s nothing to worry about for most people.

Even so I have a hard time coming to grips with the idea that every single person shippers to vaccination right now we have no way of knowing the long-term effects there’s at least some chance that two or three, let alone ten years from now. We’ll find out that the vaccine has some significant long-term impact that in hindsight. We wish we’d have known about when weighing the risk going in.

Every person approaches the decision of whether or not to get back sedated with a unique background, life station, and risk tolerance. Given the long-term unknowns, don’t you think there is some place for a newest discussion, right? Accepting and respecting some individuals Choice. Hold off at least for a little while, many of us who agree that wearing Helmet or a seatbelt is common sense.

Also, avoid buying cars in their first model year after all. Right now, it’s hard to find a place where it even feels safe to have this conversation would just carrying its own right would greatly appreciate if you are willing to bring it to the for, thanks for all you do. Thank you for sharing this. It was kind and generous of you to bring this up and I am loathe to have political conversations here on this podcast because Politics as currently defined is about arguing with people without listening to them.

And we’re not going to go there. And that’s not what we do. But it is an opportunity to talk about a whole bunch of things that have nothing to do with that. The first one is saying what we mean and meaning, what we say, and in our 200 dives into culture we’re usually talking about a disconnect between what we think we’re hearing and what we’re actually hearing about what we think we’re saying and what we’re actually saying understanding what we mean and what we want.

And so there are many people who are vaccinated Seen hesitant who are legitimately hesitant. They’re hesitant for a couple reasons. One is because they’re sort of afraid afraid of change. Afraid of the unknown, afraid of getting caught in a political conversation and it goes on and on, there is a magical book called on immunity by a woman of Eula biss and it’s so beautifully written and it is a history of multi Hundred Year history of how culture has danced around. And the issues, the issues of health and safety, and class and risk associated with vaccines.

And once we see it as a historical cultural construct, it is much easier to see past the issues in any given moment because what were not saying when we talk about this issue, when we pretend we’re talking about science, what we’re not saying is I’m afraid because we’re all afraid and fear. Fear can cause people to do surprising things. And fear can freeze Us in place.

And so if we begin by saying I’m afraid, can you teach me what I need to know? So that I won’t be afraid. We are in much better shape as a community. Then if we resort to either pretending to talk about science and statistics or resorting to talking about tribal politics because neither of those help if we can’t begin by acknowledging. And that we aren’t sure because not being sure is part of the human condition.

Now, there are several things and I’ve talked about this on the podcast that make conversations about public health fundamentally different than conversations about personal Behavior. Public health is, how fast can you drive in a school zone? Personal behavior is, should you wear a helmet when you’re riding a bike?

They’re Different kinds of conversations and we should be really clear about which one we’re having. This second thing that gets in the way is this issue of time as you have brought up really clearly and appropriately. Nobody knows what’s going to happen 10 or 15 or 20 years after people get a vaccine except people have been getting vaccines for a really long time and vaccines are some of the most studied Medical interventions in the history of humanity and what we know from those studies and from that history going back to before polio is that this is not a candidate for surprising long-term health problems.

The third thing, I think I’m up to the third thing. The third thing is we have a disconnect between when there is a problem and who is affected by that problem back. The school zone situation that it is entirely possible that someone who doesn’t get vaccinated is going to make someone else sick. And so that person who didn’t get vaccinated, doesn’t even know that that happened, which is part of the reason why it’s not appropriate to have a conversation about most people waiting because anyone who can get the vaccine has the ability to take themselves out. Out of the pool of people who spread the disease and that is a significant Public Health commitment that is part of what it is to be in culture.

Now, you correctly point out, that there are always trade-offs and there are always unknowns here is the Urgent question. How many people have died already? It’s in the millions that there are days in India where more than a thousand people are dying. I hope that we could visualize that if when somebody made a decision about having or not having the vaccine that person standing next to them would either die or not die instantly and violently getting the vaccine would be a really easy decision.

Someone opens a window on a jet and the air is all racing out. It’s really easy to make the decision to close the window. Even if that a person is objecting about their personal freedom, to open the window because they are right in front of us, is a matter of life and death. And so what we are seeing right now is a really easy calculus and the calculus is this.

We know the efficacy of the miracle of the vaccines that are available right now. The efficacy is as high as most vaccines that have ever been tested. We also know that Danger that non-vaccinated populations face. It is really significant. It’s not about whether or not you’re going to get a little bit of a rash on your skin or whether or not your hair is going to fall off. This is a matter of.

Are you going to be dead or not? And the odds of it hurting or killing somebody who’s over 60 are dramatically bigger than they are for someone who’s 20 and those numbers may change over time but what we’ve I’ve got here is a classic public health problem and what makes something a public health problem is no, we cannot know.

But yes, we have an obligation. There are a few people who for pre-existing medical reasons, cannot contribute to the culture and we have enough room for those people to be quote, freeriders unquote, because when the rest of us show up and do what we can for all of us. We come out ahead but it begins with fear and shaming. People isn’t a good way to get rid of fear.

But on the other hand, People Like Us, do things like this, the more we can normalize Behavior. The more we can standardize around what it is to be a member of community. The more likely it is that Community will form just as we don’t have people recklessly speeding in school zones just as we don’t have people strip mining. In National Parks, we have come up with rules that enable us to live in community and compared to most of the rules, this one is particularly cut-and-dry and particularly easy to measure.

That doesn’t mean it’s easy. It doesn’t mean that there is no fear. I get that. And I hope that you will read. This is book because it may very well have the tone and the thoroughness that I can’t possibly deliver in. Podcast, but I truly appreciate you caring about this and thank you for listening.

We’ll see y’all next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader, who can outthink the internet, like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you In a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -fueling-the-engines-of-division- <==

The Clearfield public library in Williamsville, New York was a great place to fall in love with books.

If you walked in and ask the friendly librarian about say science fiction, she would walk you over to a section that started with Asimov and ended with zelazny and if you were diligent reader, it would take you about two years to work your way through it. Hey it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a minute, to talk about the algorithms of division, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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It’s a chance to build the project that you’ve dreamed of to find Independence. To make a difference. You can be a bootstrapper, but it helps to know the best practices. I hope you’ll check it out. Akimbo.com / go.

The Clearfield Public Library, is a fine metaphor for the way media used to work TV networks in the United States. There were three of them four or five. If you count it generously, libraries built the Dewey Decimal System to organize their books, but do has a finite number of books in the library 10,000, 20,000, maybe a big Library might have as many as 40,000 books in it, but it was finite.

If you are the librarian and you were Kicking books to be in the library. If you are Fred Silverman who was NBC’s, genius, programmer in the 1970s and you were picking shows to put on TV, you had the same mindset, which is there are constraints, and the constraint to revolve around the fact that you don’t have a lot of shelf, Space TV network can only show one show at a time and there’s only a few networks on the air, a library, can put some books in the science fiction.

Fiction section something between Asimov and zelazny but they certainly can’t put every book in that section and then think about the cost to the customer. If you go to a bookstore, you have to buy the book pay for it before you read it. If you go to the library, sure there’s no incremental cash cost but you can only take out a finite number of books and you can only read one book at a time.

And so yes, we judge a book by it’s cover. Because the cost of sampling is pretty high for a TV network. The stakes were far higher because not only are they spending millions of dollars to make a show, but the opportunity cost was huge because if they made 10 episodes of a bad show and didn’t ignore sunk costs and ran them, they would be losing market, share to the other two networks and that market share was measured in tens of millions of dollars.

So these constraints It’s all conspired to push toward the middle. That the purpose of Discovery was to turn someone into a fan. It’s true, but not to turn them into a fan based on division, but to turn them into a fan based on connection there with the TV networks want, is for people to watch a show because everybody else is watching it, the library can’t do that because only one person can read any given book at a time, but the Really likes it. When it knows which books to buy that. Buying a book putting it on the shelf of the library and having no one take it out for three years.

That’s a failure better to group people’s interest in two broad categories and then hit the highlights of those categories. So that user satisfaction can go up. If you go to a library today and say to the librarian, I’m looking for a book on how to sharpen tools, I’d like it to be Illustrated. And at least 300 pages long, the odds are, they don’t because they don’t have a business model that supports carrying something that’s that obscure.

So, you know where I’m going at first, which is the long tail shows up, which is Amazon shows up, which is Netflix shows up Suddenly shelf. Space is not a constraint suddenly, not only does digital make the warehouse infinitely big but it also means that if you can aggregate a large It, you can carry not just a few books on sharpening tools, but every book on sharpening tools, not only can you carry one or two or three Italian documentaries, but you can carry all of them.

And so, iTunes shows up with its long tail of Music. The last stats that I heard are that millions of tracks in the iTunes Store have been listen to just a few times which makes perfect sense because it doesn’t cost. Anything to put a track there and it does cost something to listen to all of them.

Okay, so far so good. This was celebrated by lots of people including me because if we open the doors, Gatekeepers aren’t deciding what’s important and what’s not readers, get defined. What they truly want viewers, can engage in the things they want to see. And so, out of nowhere, a guy named SCI makes a video called Gangnam Style.

It seen by more than a billion people. That’s insane. He does that without a lot of fancy Gatekeepers with nothing in the way of promotion. It’s possible because The Gatekeepers weren’t there, but then a shift happens and the shift is this, what would happen if the librarian at the Clearfield Public Library?

Got a commission and what if that person’s commission was based, not only on how many books It’s do you take out, but how deep do you go into the edges of taking out books? Because a whale someone who reads a lot of books is easier to profit from then, someone who just dabbles and shows up every once in a while. How do we turn people from dabblers into whales? How do we gain their commitment to our platform and encourage them to go deeper and deeper and deeper to sample, more things.

Also, if you’re a creator of content, And we start paying you with ego points because you have followers or actual cash because you are attracting people to what you have to say, some of you will decide to make something for the mainstream, but you will soon discover that the mainstream is really crowded and it’s very hard to have a shot at all of getting attention and loyalty for the mainstream. But as I wrote about in purple cow 15 years ago, The edges otaku Purple, Cows remarkable things. Things were there are few substitutes. You might not get a lot of people but the people you get are really into it.

And so the algorithm arrives, 25 years ago, Patty maze a professor at the MIT media lab working with several collaborators came up with firefly networks. Originally called Homer, it was the birth of collaborative filtering Collaborative, filtering is better known as people who like this also like that.

And you’ve seen that everywhere you look on the web, this idea that it can recommend something to you, that you might be interested in is a revelation. But in order for it to be interesting and not just trivial what it needs to leave out. Are the things that everyone else likes to. So if you’re watching Seinfeld and it says people Woohoo, like, Seinfeld. Also, like Everyone likes Raymond, you haven’t learned anything at all because it hasn’t given you any specific insight. And so the algorithm is tuned to find the specifics to take you further down a rabbit hole.

And the rabbit hole is wonderful when, for example, you’re exploring Jazz, and you’re listening to a lot of art Blakey. And it says, oh, by the way, less, Can has a song that people who like art Blakey really like and now you’re stunned to discover Les McCann and Eddie Harris live at Montreux. That’s a big win.

And so collaborative, filtering opens the window to go deeper into our hobbies and our passions, my question is, what happens when we aim it at things like racism, like conspiracy theories, like anger, like violence. Like the way people interact with With pornography or fetishes. It’s one thing to encourage people to go further into whatever hobby makes them happy.

But what happens when those Hobbies start to divide us what happens when those Hobbies start to have violent side effects? I don’t believe that the algorithm was built with intent. I believe. What happened was hundreds or thousands of programmers all incentivized by simple metrics? Ended up experimenting with algorithms and human nature until they hit upon something that worked ever better than they expected. And what they figured out is this if you can find someone who has a little bit of interest and somehow radicalize them into someone who has a lot of interest that pays off far more than satisfying. The needs of someone who’s a little interested and then pushing them back to the mainstream that if you can’t, Take someone who’s mildly interested in Woodworking and turn them into someone who understands why you should use a piece of glass, to put the final Edge on a blade for your spokeshave.

That person is going to go deep. And when they go deep into your long tail, your company benefits, your stock price goes up and so Pinterest turns people who were mildly interested in seeing someone else’s couch into people, You are obsessed at going ever deeper into what a Chesterfield is and why it matters.

And so Politico says, oh all you wanted to know is who want some election. They take that person and push them further and further and further down the rabbit hole because it’s their rabbit hole. And they don’t want you to say, oh, no. Now I’m going to go read about Dune the movie because they don’t come out ahead. If you read about doing the movie, they need you to get deep to become radical about the way you think about politics. To Doom, scroll to go, ever deeper into the minutiae.

And so, as Chris Anderson pointed out years ago, the long tail is real. Some pundits, dismissed it early on because there wasn’t enough math to show that the long tail was paying off, but now clearly the long tail is all of it. That hits aren’t what they used to be, but the number of people who are creating for selfish reasons out on the long tail keeps increasing.

And so the algorithm Is working. It is working to radicalize the people who engage with any form of media, to push them deeper down, whatever Rabbit Hole they were looking at. So first, you want to look for a puppy but then it got a hint that you were interested in little tiny dogs and then it pushed you towards teacup dogs. And the next thing, you know, you’re not happy unless you own a dog that weighs less than 2 pounds.

Because the algorithm pushed you there, the pet store never would have The pet store would have said. We got for pets. Which one do you want? Take what? You want? A lizard. We have one of those too. But once we have an infinite amount of shelf space because we’re all connected digitally, the algorithm does with the algorithm, does it divides us? It divides us because there’s a profit in doing so not because it’s the right thing to do but just as mass media pushed us toward mass and just as the typical Supermarket pushed us toward ketchup, long tail media pushes us to The edges and so now, we need to ask a couple questions.

The first one is, are we glad are we glad that this pernicious algorithm touches every part of our Lives? Whether it’s dating or entertainment, or Home Improvement or how we spend our money, or what we retire on or politics pushes us over and over again apart away from Mass away from the middle is that helping and If you’re an investor the question is, okay? But for the people who really push this Facebook Twitter, Youtube, the three biggest ones. Is it enough already?

What would happen if they simply changed the algorithm? What would happen if somebody now with intent, a human being not an evolutionary algorithm, but a person said, we’re going to turn the algorithm upside down that every chance we get. We’re going to push people back. Toward the center. What would happen if you had a work to find the stuff that was way out on the fringes and that the algorithm wasn’t always pushing you for deeper or more.

Well, one thing that would happen in the short run is usage, would go down a bit but because these companies really don’t have any competitors. That’s okay, because they’ll still do fine. The real question is, it’s your job, but it’s also the way you you’ve chosen to spend your life that the people I’m talking to in this podcast, for Aunt, the people who run YouTube and Twitter and Facebook, don’t need to work for a living, not one of them.

So at some point they have to stop saying, I’m just doing my job. At some point, they can’t say, this is what the shareholders want because responsibility kicks in. And I’m wondering if we thought hard about what responsibilities, the people who control? The algorithm have even if they didn’t make it on purpose, Google has been hiding behind their algorithm for a really long time.

But every once in a while there’s enough of an outcry that human being goes in and changes it around, I think there’s enough of an outcry right now about division to say you know what, this division, it’s not making our lives better. It’s not leading to the outcomes. We were hoping for it is not giving us. Peace of mind or creating a world, we are proud of what would happen if we turned the algorithm upside down because I know we can it is not one of Newton’s laws of physics. It is a choice and simply because we didn’t make the choice, doesn’t mean a choice can’t be made now and there’s nothing stopping three or four or five people. That’s all it would. Take to make the decision to take responsibility for fundamentally turning the algorithm upside down.

Because there is scarcity, the internet made a mistake about scarcity. It looks like infinite shelf space in infinite choice and an infinite. Number of creators means there’s no scarcity. But there is because there’s a scarcity of trust, and there’s a scarcity of connection. Peace of mind is more scarce than ever before.

I for one would prefer more of all three. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second. With a question from A listener. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp and independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo Dot. I’m /. Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new product. This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam this is Rex. Hey sup hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is Is and that completes my question, I love to hear from you.

If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button. One question to get us going this week. Here we go. I said this is ramen and North Carolina. Thanks so much for this podcast. There’s a long time listener. I’m familiar with your critiques of Google and Facebook and the practices of those companies that have had a negative impact on our society and culture.

But while I’m sure I’m forgetting something, I don’t think I’ve heard you say quite as much about the impact of Amazon. Beyond the great point you made about the role of the Kindle. In remaking, the book industry and Amazon’s role in the in the long tail. In general, you have made admirable use of the Amazon platform as part of your book launches and sometimes have links to Amazon them in your blog posts.

I live in a rural place and I’m certainly not immune to the incredible convenience of the everything store. Or but we also know that Amazon has been tough competition for local businesses of all sorts and also small suppliers. I feel like Amazon kind of personifies the race to the bottom that you often talk about.

And we hear a lot of stories about Amazon warehouses and the treatment of their workers that don’t make me feel all that great about giving them my money. So my question is really just this. What are your thoughts about the impact of the Amazon Behemoth on our culture? You so much. Thank you for this question. If you go to Relentless.com, you’ll see that it still takes you to amazon.com Relentless. Was the very first name for Amazon, and Jeff wasn’t kidding when he named it that first, let’s do a flashback to 25 or 28 years ago back. Then in the 90s there were more than 10,000 independent bookstores. There are still quite a few.

Stores, but not enough, but Back Then, There Were well, over 10,000 of them. If we figure that the typical bookstore had 30,000 books in it, some had far more than that some had less, but let’s pick 30,000. That means that there were thirty thousand times ten thousand or 300 million books sitting in bookstores waiting for somebody to walk in and buy one.

At a retail price of $20, each that’s six billion dollars worth of inventory. Just waiting for somebody to go to the right, bookstore on the right day to awry a book that’s in stock. This is clearly incredibly inefficient. And when Amazon showed up their original offering of any book you want, we’ll get it for. You was a godsend for many readers.

While the typical bookstore might have had 25 or 30,000 bucks in a big bookstore, might have had double that there were millions and millions of books in print. I still remember hearing from my mom in the 90s about a phone call that she got she ran an independent bookstore at a museum in Buffalo New York and the phone call was hey where this new company called Amazon? We think you have a copy of this art book.

If we send You a FedEx label and pay the full retail plus. You’re handling costs, will you ship it directly to our customer and with a smile? She did just that because the goal of most bookstores was to get people the book that they wanted. So when Amazon showed up to the marketplace, they were seen as a net benefit, but then the Relentless part kicks in, and the Prince, I think between Amazon and I’ve given talks and have known folks there for a long time, and Google, and Facebook also places where I’ve engaged is that Amazon is completely up front and clear about some of the basic principles that they’re operating under. They are Relentless and the mistake that we made the challenge that we had the historical accident. Is this 450 years? We have based the center of our Civic culture on the village that sells stuff on retail that is what separates a fun thriving, exciting Community from one that we really don’t understand where the middle of it, is that it’s the stores. It’s the malls, it’s the shops that people are paying attention to. They are our streetscape.

Not only that, but we use the money that these Merchants earn mostly to pay the landlords and landlords use the money to do. Upkeep. But we also have them pay taxes and we use those taxes to pay for all sorts of Social Services and the other center of our communities. Our cities and our towns is office space.

Well the pandemic has upended. The idea of office space particularly white collar workers who aren’t in a factory who can show the zoom and Amazon and a few others have upended the idea of Retail now. Back again, 20, something years ago, I gave a talk at Walmart. I believe the year was 1999 at the time and still to this day Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world, but a long time ago, 22, 23 years ago, Amazon was a tiny blip.

So I went there to give a speech in Bentonville Arkansas and there was a banner across the offices of Walmart’s digital operation. And it’s a You can’t out Amazon Amazon, even 20 years ago, the biggest retailer in the world was afraid of Amazon’s Relentless focus on a few metrics. So a couple of these metrics, the first one is this, it is unusual for an innovator to also be the lowest price and doing both of those things at the same time, while also consistently and persistently, being the top rated retailer in America for customer service, those three things in one place on heard of.

And to do those three things, a Relentless approach to metrics to churning it out to using, wooden doors, as desks to lowering overhead, to having a Relentless mindset, that says, if we can offer our customers off the charts, Tumor service with no questions, asked, if we can offer them the lowest price, they can find and the best selection, and we can do it. While innovating, it’s going to be really hard for someone to stop us and while they were doing that cities and towns in the United States and in lots of other places around the world, didn’t charge them any taxes.

And so, a hollowing out occurred because Amazon was really good at giving people what they want. Aunt. And if you give people what they want, they will often take it. Because if in the short run or even the medium run, they come out ahead. They can get what they want. They can have more selection, they can pay less, it’s more convenient and faster.

Well a lot of people are going to take them up on that. So one defense that Amazon has for their Relentless approach is they have created an enormous amount of wealth for their customers because their customers get more stuff for Money and in less time but of course. Yes, there are side effects to any sort of growth like this.

One of them is that the local retailer can no longer be as local as they used to be? And our Civic engagement, which depended on the local retailer not just sponsoring the baseball team, but being in, and of the community is seriously threatened because we built a big Part of that cohesion around the town square and the stuff you can buy there.

The other thing that’s going on which as a cultural critic, if that’s what I am, I have commented on before is that Amazon made the decision a really long time ago, not to sell anything, they sell everything but they don’t sell anything.

What do I mean by that? What I mean is there’s a job called a merchant and what the Merchant does is decide what to feature, decide what to promote, decide what to give an end cap to decide what to publish that the acts of merchants, as being members of the community, determine what our culture is like, because the merchants particularly the local merchants or someone like a book. Publisher says, I’m going to have to live with the consequences of promoting this thing over that thing.

And what gets promoted, whether it’s by a program director, at a local radio station, or by a local retailer determines, what we engage with, and what we engage with determines, what the culture is like, well, Amazon, and I’ve seen this first hand up. Close doesn’t have dials for most of its people to turn to shift. What’s getting promoted and what’s not?

Yes, there is definitely an algorithm at Amazon and it is Wired to increase profitability but it is not responsible. Apparently, no one is responsible for what are we promoting? What are we leading to? And so if we look at something as simple as the Kindle Store the single best way to get a book to be a best-seller on the Kindle is not to go, do a bunch of meetings, do a bunch of promotion, figure out how to get the local bookstore owner to like you.

Though. Amazon has spent years? Making authors, think that have Amazon likes them. Something good will happen instead. It’s to find your smallest viable audience, go way out on the long tail. Find a coherent cohesive group of people and give them exactly what they want. And at some level is freedom, this freedom for all ideas to Bubble to the surface based on just the merits, not on the Judgment of some Merchants feels.

Attractive, but it can spiral out of control. So the good news is you get something like the instant pot, the instant pot, a sensation, a bargain, a game changer in your kitchen. I strongly recommend you drop the 89 bucks and give it a. Try would have been impossible before Amazon because the amount of heft that, you would have to have to get enough shelf, space to do enough promotion to keep that shelf, space was so big that it’s unlikely. That the Tiny company that launched the instant pot could have done it, but with the magic of Amazon, selling everything instead of anything.

Well, once you had a hundred customers who were busy talking about it over, and over again, to lots of people, suddenly, you have a hit on your hands. So this Relentless approach creates all sorts of fascinating side effects because part of it is based on an assumption that the other elements Of our governance of our culture will fill in the gaps.

Yes. The cities and towns need to speak up and say you know those trucks you’re sending into our town to deliver everything. Well they’re welcome, but they’ve got to pay their fair share their fair share of what it costs us to have safe, clean places to live roads that they can access and on and on that, if institutions don’t push back well, then Amazon will continue to be more will Atlas number two, we are used to significant organizations to have local roots and to acknowledge those Local Roots as they stand up as a corporate citizen again.

Maybe it was a mistake for a hundred years to count on corporate citizenship, maybe what we should have done as a community is that these are the rules and if you want to focus on making a profit, go ahead, we’re going to focus on making sure that the taxes you pay. Are put to good use not just sponsoring a local baseball team, but paying for the library and figuring out how to create Civic engagement that isn’t dependent on the local Corporation.

But as Amazon has become one of the most valuable companies in the world, they haven’t mostly done that. What Amazon has mostly done is say we are here to serve our customers and then we’re here to serve our shareholders. And finally we will make sure that our employees Are paid at least enough to get them to come work for us, but probably not a lot more.

And the employees, in senior roles are getting stock options which get paid off when the shareholders come out ahead. So it is a very clear, well, labeled form of corporate capitalism, which is, we know exactly why we are here, how we are being measured and how we’re turning the dial.

Now, I think It wouldn’t cost them very much to be a little bit less Relentless that when we look at some of the choices they make, whether it’s about DRM or how things show up in the store or how people are paid, there are ways that Amazon could back off just a little bit to be a better corporate citizen, but I think part of what Amazon is trying to do is to make it clear that they know exactly why they are here, and that they are relentless.

In reaching their goals turning the crank over and over again. So, I am not a dyed-in-the-wool Amazon fan, but I’m also clearly saying sure I’ve been buying from them that as somebody who has books to sell on behalf of my publisher and promote, I’ve raised more than $100,000 that I’ve donated to charity through their affiliate programs as an author Amazon made it significantly easier for me to bring books too. My readers, then all of the years I worked with Barnes and Noble and the other independent bookstores because their agenda wasn’t the same as my agenda, or even my Publishers agenda. But I think it’s worth distinguishing this from Google because Google relentlessly lies about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.

And quietly behind the scenes, shifts the user interface, and their algorithms to benefit them, not their users Facebook, which That out to connect people to weave together possibility and culture has done a terrible job of minimizing the negative side effects that many of their algorithmic choices have led to.

And so I could go on and on running a big company isn’t easy changing. The world is fraught and there are side effects. And the question is who is responsible for limiting? No side effects and making it. So that you make things better and then you found them, I’m not sure anybody knows the answer but in the case of Amazon at least, they’re very clear about the game. They’re playing.

Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time.

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet, like we have data what all-nba gets right is Puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says, yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, what are you going to face those fears? I’m not gonna let you hide.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the were one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

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==> -getting-stuck-on-a-broken-cycle- <==

I got tricked, I got tricked by a conspiracy, not a conspiracy theory but an actual conspiracy one that didn’t cost that much to build in one that even after the conspiracy is exposed. I still want to be tricked by hey it’s Seth. And this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk. About Plastics. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

It’s a chance to build the project. That that you’ve dreamed of to find Independence to make a difference. You can be a bootstrapper, but it helps to know the best practices. I hope you’ll check it out. Akimbo.com / go.

I just want to say one word to you, just one word.

Yes, I am listening. Just so you Plastics. I wasn’t the only one who was tricked. You were probably trick to you. Might still be tricked. The question is not did the Plastics industry conspire to trick people in the United States and around the world into believing that Plastics could be effectively recycled. That’s a fact, you can find all the details at a Kimbo dot link. There’s been some great reporting by Frontline and NPR on this topic.

My question is, why did it work? Why does it still Work. Why is it that with just 50 million dollars a year? Which for reference is one twentieth of a billion dollars which to put it in perspective is less than 5% of the amount of money spent on the last presidential election. The United States that small amount of money was able to put a blue bin just about everywhere we look and it was one that enabled the Plastic industry to keep growing to the point where it’s almost a trillion In dollars a year in Revenue.

The truth is of course, as you can discover with just 10 minutes of reading, the Plastics can’t be recycled that fewer than 10% of all the Plastics that were made in the last 50 years have been recycled it turns out chemically that Plastics break down. Every time we try to recycle them that even if we could sort them perfectly wash them perfectly, prepare them perfectly. It would still be Bur to make new plastic. And so, the problem of course, is, where do we put the plastic we’ve used? And why did it work so well, why even after I know the truth, do I persist in feeling the itch to put that plastic bottle into that blue bin?

There were signals, there were stories and it gets to Yuma nature. The thing is that yuman beings at least for my entire life. Time have traded almost anything for convenience to move. Has pointed out that people will instantly give up their privacy. Their well-being, lots of long term upsides for convenience now, and so the industrial system around us, the ratchet of capitalism. Figuring out how to get a little bit ahead. Make a few extra bucks, because if you don’t, somebody else will that system has offered us convenience. And one thing can be said for plastic containers, they’re convenient, they’re flexible resilient lightweight easy to carry easy to store, they don’t break down over time. If you drop one on the floor doesn’t shatter their pretty when they’re on the Shelf. Plastic containers have informed our lives. There weren’t any plastic containers, 80 years ago and now there are plastic Ears everywhere.

Something shifted. And what shifted was a technology came along that was convenient, but in the back of our heads, we had a hunch that there was a catch and the catch was we really don’t want to litter now. We were taught not to litter by a nationwide campaign in the 1960s before. Then it wasn’t uncommon for someone to eat a McDonald’s hamburger and just throw Bag out the window when they were done.

But we came up with a cultural standard People Like Us, do things like this People Like Us. Don’t throw garbage in the street. We don’t Litter. What about then all of these plastic bottles. What about the 2 liter Pepsi that cost 89 cents? Where do we put the bottle when we’re done? And so the reason the Plastics industry didn’t need to spend a lot of money at first Is that we wanted a way to assuage our guilt. We wanted a way to get to convenience without feeling like a selfish jerk.

They look empty yet. It’s anything but trash it’s full of potential and act upon making sure that the potential isn’t thrown away. We find near the country’s largest most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help Valuable uses and rolls. Instead of filling valuable land at Dupont. We make the things that make a difference.

And the amount of effort required to recycle, a plastic bottle is exactly the right amount of effort. Composting, really hasn’t caught on because composting is a pain in the neck because composting takes time because composting might smell because composting brings bugs a lot. But recycling, the convenience the virtue of putting out two bins instead of one, not that big a hassle.

And now Off the hook, I get to feel like a good person and have my convenience at the same time, it is not clear that the people who were responsible for this conspiracy understood human nature, this deeply, they were flailing around, they were the gas companies in the oil companies. The oil companies aren’t known for being brilliant, marketers.

But in this case, they were brilliant marketers. But then we need to compound it, because it’s still not convenient. Agent, if the town doesn’t come and pick up the recycling, but how to get the town to do that? Well, they needed two things to happen. The first is they needed a small group of people in every town who cared about the environment to stand up and argue for this expense.

And the second thing they needed was more and more citizens willing to participate in recycling, the two of them back and forth and back and forth. In a virtuous cycle. There are people who are environmentally inclined and so, When the oil companies hiding behind clever names and lobbying campaigns, came to them with something that felt right.

Let’s take this junk and not dump it in the ocean. Let’s put it back into the industrial system that created it. Many environmentalists said, sure we’re behind that and then the second part, the people who make Plastics have influence over the companies that are selling it to you. And so they started putting something At the bottom of the container, the recycling symbol and a number.

And the number was just complicated enough. Just inconvenient enough that we felt like we were doing the right thing by spending one or two cycles to imagine this one can be recycled or this one can’t or if we were lazy just recycle them all because after all there’s a recycling symbol on the bottom and so it all got dumped into the oil recycling system. The system that was some success can recycle glass or Metals, can’t deal with this Deluge of plastic. And so, we shipped it all to China and then China stopped taking it.

And so, we started dumping it in landfills, but before we dumped it in landfills, we washed it very carefully at Great expense in our corporate facilities. You might be seeing how deep this goes because you don’t need Very many people who are into recycling as a cultural totem to shame. People who aren’t into taking action, it’s just easier to put your plastic bottles into a container label for them, then to deal with someone hassling you because you threw them in the garbage.

And so the ratchet continues to turn because culture runs deep and people like us do things like this is important. It establishes. Who we are? It gives us Us peace of mind. And once we’ve made a decision once we’ve decided that we’re the kind of person that sacrifices just a bit of convenience to be part of us.

It’s really hard to give that up because of some costs because if we did it yesterday were we wrong to do it yesterday? Or is it just easier to keep doing it tomorrow? And so in the face of this information it’s still hard for me to walk past. Recycling bin. Even though I know that we were scammed, that there really is no upside to recycling this plastic bottle because I’m not really recycling. It back to our story, all of which leads to this cycle. This cycle of here’s something that’s convenient. And here’s a way to not feel guilty about it.

Here is a way for your government to spend money, to send a truck to your house. So it’s more convenient. So that You can put something into the blue bin and not feel guilty about it and around it goes. And despite the fact that this is all been exposed, the Plastics industry is doing it again. They just launched a new campaign because when we bring together the heroes of today to drain to build and help our cities, our communities, and our neighborhoods in Peru, We can do something truly incredible.

Let’s be the ones that came together to change the world. This new campaign, these quote Investments on quote aren’t going to keep plastic out of the waste stream and they’re not going to keep plastic out of the ocean. What they do is they give the convenient seeking consumer a way to feel better about his or her choices.

So all of this is a way of understanding how our culture tends to work. One thing that we do as humans is we want to absolve ourselves of sins and we put them all into a big bucket and let that bucket be held by some one else. Some other organization, some other government entity a scapegoat perhaps but it’s not our problem.

We’re just doing what comes easy to us. What’s convenient? What’s a little We’ve got lives to live families to feed work to do. We’re not going to spend all our time, seeking out a glass bottle. And so people like the Plastics industry, which have built this conspiracy continued to churn out more plastic than ever before, because that’s how our culture works.

Because in the short run, everyone is doing what they are supposed to do every single entity involved. In this story, The Theists the oil Executives, the shareholders, the people, at the government hearings, the consumers to harried moms and dads at the supermarket buying yogurt. Every single person is acting in their short-term best interests.

And the challenge that we have as architects of culture is to figure out what to do about that when the externalities are not built in. No one is actually paying the cost of billions of pounds of plastic floating. Around in the ocean. This idea that satisfying our short-term selfish interests will eventually work itself out is the undoing of our culture because culture works.

When we actually leaned against our short-term selfish incentives, that’s the hard work of changing. What people like us do when we do things like this. So we’re going to have to figure out in this case and in so many other cases. Has a different story. A story that resonates in a different way that opens the door for a forward ratchet. That doesn’t involve more single-use, plastic that doesn’t involve lobbyists and conspiracies and stories we want to hear but stories that aren’t true.

And yet, even as I say this, I really want to be able to recycle plastic recycling. Plastic would make my life so much easier and eliminate the guilt. That’s associated with buying Something that’s more convenient cheaper, lighter easier to use and more resilient one thing’s clear, Seth Godin changing, the way he buys things in plastic is going to make no difference whatsoever.

And how the world deals with this problem? We need a centralized long-term thoughtful approach that uses Market power to shift the ratchet in the other direction. What we learned. When we raised the tax on cigarettes was pretty clear. Whew. Were people smoke cigarettes? The market pays attention to how much something costs.

And if we’re really serious, about changing the flow of plastics, through our waste stream, the simple direct and effective answer is to change how much they cost, because once we do that, the market will wake up and pay attention and figure out a way around it. So know the market doesn’t solve every problem.

But our culture, Our culture is held hostage by the market, because we’ve been inundated for so many years by effective stories that are about how we buy and how we sell because that’s how so many of us, keep score. And if we don’t find a solution that understands respects and dances with the market, it’s no solution at all.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with a couple questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is the time to learn? A new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp, an independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo do I’m /. Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new product. This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam. This is Rex. Who’s gonna hi? This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is And that completes my question as you know I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or anything previous please, visit akimbo that link. That’s a Ki M Bo link-16, click the appropriate button.

We’re going to do two questions this week. Here we go. Hey Seth it’s Nathan from Jackson Mississippi. I just got finished listening to your fractions episode from last Jake and I have to say, I think it’s my favorite akimbo episode so far and I don’t really know why. But it got me thinking about your other episode math class is hard.

And of course, my brain kept going and wondering why these ideas. These mathematical principles practices ways of looking at the world, you know why they aren’t taught. And so, I had the question. What would a Seth Godin math class look like Curious to hear your thoughts? Thanks for everything. You do. You’re an inspiration every day.

Thank you for this Nathan. I really appreciate it. I’ve given some thought to this and I’m lucky enough to know Annie Duke former World Poker champion and author of a best-selling book about making decisions her new book which is an out. Yet is really Exciting as well. Her thought is that we need to teach kids to make better decisions. So the first thing I would do is replace half of all the time that’s spent on math and instead spend that time on decision making I would start in kindergarten and teach decision-making as a craft because through the lens of decision-making, we can teach an enormous range of useful practical. And academic skills that will help the citizens of the future cope with a world. That’s going to be filled with choices but we still need math, not arithmetic, because arithmetic is sort of an epic waste of time in a world where we all have a device in our pocket that does arithmetic better and faster than we ever could. But math and math is not 3. Plus 3 math is understanding the concepts around abstract numbers And the best way I can think to do that inspired by any Duke is starting in second grade. I’m going to leave the first graders out of this.

We should start teaching kids. How to play poker and there should be five or ten years of Poker playing going on in school because not only will poker-playing enroll kids in a journey because the enrollment is critical. It’s not about. Will this be on the test? It’s will this help me win the next round of Of Poker and unlike soccer, or other sports.

It’s a Level Playing Field, the smallest kid, the youngest kid shortest kid has just as much of a chance of winning a game of poker as anybody else in the classroom. And once you start playing poker, not only do you need to learn decision-making but quickly you start understanding probability and fractions and percentages, and the rest of it, after five years, Years of playing poker, kids aren’t going to memorize what to do with a Full House. What they’re going to understand is an inherent Vision, a way of seeing that lets them embrace all the stuff that the world is going to put in front of them. Sure. After that there’s plenty of room to polish kids who are enrolled in this journey to help them get to things like algebra and trigonometry.

But let’s start by teaching kids to love math. Math. The way some of us do, thanks for this. I said it’s Dom here from Queensland Australia. I’ll listen to your recent episode about jet skis and fatbergs. With particular interest, I working field of outdoor recreation and my organization is an advocate for outdoor activities.

One of our regular rephrases appropriate activities, inappropriate locations. So perhaps the situation is not that we shouldn’t be manufacturing jet skis, but maybe the manufacturers of jet skis should also be manufacturing created. Think allocating appropriate locations for those jet skis to be used, maybe that as a society, we need to push some more responsibility. On those manufacturers to find appropriate ways to use, that product products, rather than just releasing them onto an unsuspecting World, which annoys unsuspecting people on their back, porch. A mile away from the river.

Thanks for all the work today is greatly, appreciate it. Thank you, Dom. I think there are two really big Ideas here, which I haven’t touched on. The first one is the idea that manufacturers ought to be responsible for the side effects of what they make, because there are no side effects. There’s only affects, and I think there’s a difference between someone misusing a product, and someone using the product in a way, it was sort of intended to be used.

So we can look at Something as simple as what happens to the boxes that manufacturers use to put their stuff in who’s responsible for the cost of getting rid of those boxes? Well, with all the codes that we can put in and on things, it’s pretty easy to track. How a box ended up in the disposal stream and if manufacturers are responsible for how those boxes are, disposed of, you can bet it would take about 15 minutes for boxes to enter. End up being much more disposable. So number one as you’re pointing out responsibility of the manufacturer and the second one is this idea of appropriate because so many of the conflicts between personal freedom and the public sphere are about this very idea of is it appropriate? Is it appropriate to bring a Boombox into a movie theater? While everyone else is watching a movie and playing your music?

I think we would all agree. The answer is no, you don’t have the freedom to interrupt the movie even though it’s a private space with your music. Well, too often, what we’ve done is said, well, this is a public space and I can do whatever I want. I can throw whatever I want overboard or out the window. I can create all sorts of ripples for the people around me and for a long time, particularly in villages, as opposed to cities, we relied on people’s good sense to help. Them, avoid doing things that were inappropriate, but now it’s getting harder and harder to do that. Partly because social media is made it a sport partly because there are people who run Fortune, 100 companies. There are people who are in elected office who have decided that being inappropriate is a shortcut to being noticed. And that being noticed, it’s a shortcut to being successful.

It’s hard for me to see how that scales. It’s hard for me to see how that works in the long run. So thanks for the question, thank you for the work, you do. We’ll see everybody next time.

I just don’t think it’s possible or probable. And in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right? There is no great thought leader who can out. The internet, like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, what are you going to face those fears? I’m not gonna let you hide.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know where we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up.

Consider the alt MBA. More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -a-billion-dollars-worth-of-words- <==

The typical adult gets by with about 3,000 words of vocabulary of 3,000 words. Almost all of them learned by the time, were 11 years old. And here’s the interesting question. Do we need to know more words? Because we have interesting things to say or do we have interesting things to say? Because we know more words, hey it’s Seth and this is Akimbo will be back in a second to talk about a billion dollars worth of vocabulary.

But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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They say that the Inuit have dozens of words for snow, but you don’t have to go to the great white North to discover that I grew up in Buffalo. New York. We have plenty of words for snow. So does anybody who’s ever done Nordic skate skiing or any kind of skiing we talked about blizzards. We talk about chop, we talk about corduroy. What about flake? Or hail or ice or blue ice, or man-made snow or packed powder or deep powder or spring powder or rotten snow or slush. Or slush you get the idea.

It turns out that once you know a lot of words for snow, you start to notice that there are a lot of different varieties of snow. That vocabulary Works in both directions that we develop new vocabulary terms. When we have ideas that we need to express that are difficult to express with the old words, but also learning. Learning new words, turns on lights for us. It exposes us to gradations we didn’t see before artists painters.

No way more colors than normal people. That’s because they see colors and need to explain to us what they are seeing going from the 12 box, to the 64 box of Crayola. Crayons helps kids discover that there are actually more Lawyers in the world. 27 years ago, Marjorie Mandel and I decided to write a book about vocabulary. Yes, I wrote a dictionary with help from Marjorie. Why did we do this? Well there was a letter in the New York Times and the letter two paragraphs. Long was filled with words. I didn’t know what they meant me with my fancy college. Education was busy. Looking at this letter and I couldn’t understand a third of the The words, I decided to look them up. And what I discovered was that a person who had written the letter was a bit of a pedant, pedant that the person. How do I pronounce that word? Hold on, turns out that the person had written the letter was a bit of a patent. Someone who’s pedantic someone who is using words to get in the way of his commentary which actually was sort of foolish once I understood what he was trying to say.

But in so many other cases. I discovered that once you knew a word, you could be precise and if you could be precise you had a breakdown what you meant to say. So Marjorie. And I pitched this book, which I called million dollar words to running press, while there were a thousand words in it, that’s a billion dollars. If you do the math, the book was in print for a total of two weeks, our editor had left the firm and right after the book came out. It disappeared alert listeners to this podcast. Can pick up their free copy digitally by visiting akimbo dot link.

Some of the words in million dollar words are actually million dollar words that meet my criteria. For example, bildungsroman, be ild, UNG bildungsroman is a novel of Education, something like Catcher in the Rye knowing that there is a category for this kind of book, helps us Us realize that this kind of book is a kind of genre a type. Something worth exploring.

It helps us realize that narratives about education are critical for lots. And lots of people who bother to read books. There is no equivalent for books about skiing and for good reason because they’re not aligned. Knowing that the category exists helps us do better going forward on the other hand, a word like by sextile, not Really helpful. We put it in the book because it’s sort of clever. It is about anything that happens on February 29th. I have no idea. Why bisects dial would mean something that happens once every four years on leap year. But it does that’s just about showing off. That’s not really a million-dollar word but you get it included with all thousand of the million-dollar words. But as long as we’re working our way through the bees, how about the word bluestocking, a bluestocking is a woman who didn’t go to a fancy College who doesn’t have a fancy education, who devotes herself to literary or scholarly. Pursuits today, this is a hopelessly outdated term. It shouldn’t be applied to one gender or the other, but think back to the westerns of the 50s that referred back to the Western life of the 1850s, where there weren’t that many women in any of those fictional towns. But the schoolmarm was certainly a bluestocking, some words have been Over time, we need to understand their origin, so we can get back to what was intended. The word boondoggle didn’t originally refer to an expensive business trip for no good reason, back when we could take business trips, it originally referred to busy work as the late. David graeber wrote in his book, about dead-end jobs, we have created enormous number of boondoggles. As we have industrialized, the world, Old. And once we can see a boondoggle it’s hard to unsee it and one more as long as I’m reading the bees to you bowdlerized named. After Thomas bowdlerized battler. Took it upon himself to cleanse out the offensive parts of what he was reading particularly William Shakespeare, that well-known pornographer, bowdlerized singing continues to happen all around us. And yes, it deserves a name because censorship means something, Totally different. Words are containers containers, for ideas, and without a container it’s hard to see the idea again. What I’m arguing for here is not to show off by knowing a lot of words that have a bunch of syllables to them. How are you going to understand how computers work if terms like TCP IP or peer-to-peer or packets mean?

Nothing to you. Learn the vocabulary. Now the light can go on for you to learn the concept. Yes, we can look it all up on Google. Yes. Google Translate is an easy way to move something from one language to another but no Google doesn’t help us understand the amount of information in our world is exploding and it has been exploding my entire life since you began listening to this short rant of a podcast more podcasts Been created, then you would be able to listen to if you did nothing but listen to podcasts for the next six months of your life. We cannot keep up. It doesn’t do us any good to try to keep up but we can do is start to understand Concepts that instead of racing through the 3000 words that we all know we can understand that the next circle of words, the circle of words that are known by people who know things. About their topic are worth learning.

Not because we want to impress them, we can impress them by using a thesaurus before we send them an email. No, we want to do it because a word points to a container and the container holds the concept and understanding the concept is critical because we do not want to be spoon-fed. We want to choose our own ideas and dissect them on our own to choose to understand so we can build upon If you want to find someone who truly understands genre a category, a way to do work, find someone who has a vocabulary that they can defend that they can take apart and put back together.

Learn their vocabulary, and you can begin to learn the concepts. Why we even have a term like corduroy? A skier can tell you, but someone who adds in skied, probably has no clue. So short of strap. Tapping on your boots. One of the best ways to understand how skiers make decisions is to start, to understand what corduroy even is.

Find the words, understand the words and then build a conceptual framework around the words. So there you go, and Auntie diluvian defense of why it’s worth learning a billion dollars worth of words, even if you can get the PDF for free, thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second, with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp, an independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.com. Go to find out about their new Upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. – this is an apology.

This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. They sent. This is Rex Pizza. Hi. This is Russell news from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question. As you know, I do love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo link2006, click the appropriate button, keep them short and direct, and I’ll do my best to get to them.

Here we go. Hey Seth.

This is Sean from Columbia Missouri and your last podcast about curation, it seemed by the end of the episode. You were fully for essentially having these these big Tech and the people developing the the code to push people back into the mainstream. However, you also seem to talk about how there is benefit to To curating someone towards the long tail.

If it’s related to, you know, something they’re passionate about and so I wonder is there a balance to find where maybe we’re not pushing to people to the political extremes but we can still help people find the Obscure extreme passions. That might really make them happy. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Thanks.

Thank you for this. Here’s the deal. Google quoted in today’s newspaper said we can’t police the internet.

There they are. Wringing, their hands like in Casablanca, unbelieving that there are Bad actors on the web and that some of them are acting the way they do perhaps because of Google. Well, of course, they are because, in many ways, Google is the internet. And those folks who post revenge porn Urdu, quote reputation management wouldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the power of Google’s search algorithm.

So I think the tech companies have to take Responsibility. They are not innocent bystanders and the way that they push people in One Direction or another you can call it curation, I might call it the discovery algorithm is their responsibility and a problem for all of us. So you are right as the author of books. Like we are all weird and tribes and poke the box. I think cool things happen when we have niches, when we are able to make things that matter for people who Are when we can find small groups of people and help them get to where they want to go.

But there’s for me.

Anyway, a really clear dividing line. The question is, if people get more into this if they become more obsessed or more particular, if they’re otaku gets louder and louder will the rest of us suffer or benefit. So, if you go to Comic-Con which each year before the pandemic got more and more, Landish with costumes, with people going into the trivia of various science fiction things with cosplay in the rest of it, I’m not sure it hurt anybody else. And I’m pretty sure that the people there were delighted to be part of it.

I think if we find people who are arguing about the finer points of page, 18 of the original edition of Dune and I don’t know how to pronounce Bene gesserit. Well, I don’t have any problem with that either. That is enjoyable. It takes us far down a rabbit hole that makes our culture more diverse and interesting. On the other hand, if a porn site is pushing people further and further into things like incest or violence, I think it’s pretty likely that other people are going to suffer because of this propaganda and it is propaganda in the sense that the algorithm is pushing people to do things. They wouldn’t do if they weren’t constantly Lee indoctrinated by what the algorithm is pushing them to experience.

And I think we can see the same thing in certain cable TV networks. So for me, the dividing line is pretty clear if the cultural shift that the algorithm is causing causes discomfort or pain for people who are outside of the circle. If it divides us when it needs to unite us, then it’s a problem for all of us.

It’s a public Mental Health. ‘The problem and I think that they should take responsibility for it because it wasn’t there before they showed up that media is powerful and marketing is powerful. That’s part of the reason why companies spend money on it because it works. And so just because a computer is doing it, not a person.

Well, that computer was programmed by a person and so, yeah, that’s a rant but that’s my feeling about it. Hey Seth, this is Anna from outside Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I would love to hear your thoughts on influencers in marketing. So, let me tell you a little bit about why I’m asking this question.

The first part is that my sister who is an interior. Architect recently, has hit it, big on Tick Tock and is now considered an influencer. There are companies who are sending her products for free. That show make videos about them, which is really amazing and because she’s such an amazing professional and personal person of Integrity.

I feel the need to tell you that she has only promoted products that she feels good about and that she identifies with, in terms of her brand. I know that’s not the case for all influencers. What I’m noticing about what’s going on here? Is this very clear transactional relationship? She has an audience, who trusts her likes her.

These companies are seeking to sell their products to her audience, she would like, to get free products that she likes. And so it’s this win-win-win transactional, relationship. The second part of this thinking for me is about my own career in life, which is in the nonprofit sector. And I’m wondering about how we can leverage influencers in terms of causes instead of products. So I’m really wondering. Do you have some thoughts about influencers, and marketing and how folks? Like me might take advantage leverage this phenomenon, folks, who Are not interested in selling things for profit, but selling ideas for momentum.

Thanks Seth. Thank you. For this question, Anna. And thanks for the work. You do. You’re bringing up a couple words that I think are worth exploring. One of them is influencers and the other one is influenced. So all of us are influenced. And the question is by what? So if we go up to Stranger in a city and offer them money to do something with us, that’s illegal.

They are being motivated, simply by money. That’s why it’s illegal. On the other hand, if we go on a date with somebody over and over again because we think they’re cute, we enjoy their company and they take us to fancy restaurants. That’s considered romantic. What’s the difference? Well, the difference is that, when money shows up because people have a very powerful story about money, we start to tell ourselves stories that go along with the Unnie. We start to tell ourselves. Well yeah, I would promote this on my Instagram or Tick Tock for free but I’m getting paid money. Isn’t that a nice bonus?

The challenge, of course, is you wouldn’t do it for free because you weren’t doing it before they showed up to offer you money. And so money starts to change our perception of what we think is good and how we spend our time, Kevin Kelly has a great rubric uses for making decisions about things like speaking gibberish. Far in the future, someone asks him to do something in nine months.

He says to himself. If it was tomorrow, would I say yes? Because it’s easier for people to say, yes, to Something in the distant future, you can add to that if it was for free. Would I say yes? And if you can actually and honestly use that calculus, you can make a different sort of decision. So there are some people have taken a head start on line and figured out how to make money being a I’ll put it in quotes responsible influencer, in the sense that they support things, they get paid for, but they don’t go overboard and if they’re able to do that in a consistent way, then it doesn’t hurt their brand or where they’re going. So someone like Tim Ferriss runs ads on his podcast in which he’s reading them for products that he uses for, which is getting paid a bunch of money, and it doesn’t hurt his relationship with his listeners. Because it’s part of the Promise of who he is and what he does. On the other hand, if someone like Oprah started, taking money for the books that she recommends. Well pretty soon, she’d be recommending books that maybe wouldn’t rise to the same level. So it gets really complicated really fast. So now to answer your question for a non-profit, you already have influencers, they’re just not influenced by money and this is The key to the whole thing that the nonprofit that you run, has people who are supporting you, they’re sending you money. They’re sending you volunteer hours. They’re talking about you in the community. Why are you paying them?

No, of course not. But there’s still something in it for them. And as I wrote about in this is marketing, its affiliation and Status affiliation. There’s something in it for me to feel like I’m in sync. Like, I’m doing what the others are doing. Like, I’m not falling behind. Status. There’s something in it for me to be a leader. There’s something in it for me to be seated at the head table.

And so the art of almost everything that we do in culture, except for cash payment, to tick tock influencers, the art is to offer people. Non-financial influence, non-financial payment. That makes them eagerly decide to support the cause not. Because you’re doing some simple math about money, but because they’re doing complicated math, about culture and belonging and doing work that matters.

Now the beauty of this is, it’s more resilient, you’re not going to be easily outbid. It is transparent in the sense that we imagine that others like us are making decisions based on their beliefs, their desires, their love, their connection, not Based on whether or not they got money under the table.

That’s why we don’t approve of bribery by government officials. Yet government officials are influenced all the time, we don’t want a government official who is never influenced because then they won’t pay attention to what voters want. We want them to be influenced, just not quite so directly. So thanks for exploring this high fives, to your sister and good luck with the work.

We’ll see you next time.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason. Why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -a-nation-of-clerks- <==

Our Story begins with a young man from out of town, born in 1755 part of a revolution. One of the Young Voices, someone always taking notes writing like he was running out of time. Beep. You’re somebody who rubbed a lot of people the wrong way and sometimes times went too far. This is the story of Bertrand. Burr are Dvorak born the same year is Alexander Hamilton and he said something that led to something that changed the way that people in another country thought of themselves for a long time.

Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about A nation of shopkeepers. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

It’s F and this is a podcast. It’s a podcast produced by Alex De Palma. Alex is a bit of a podcast Whisperer Alex and I are inviting you to join us in the podcasting workshop and this is Alex, De Palma, Seth’s co-teacher and producer in this class you’ll learn not just the technology to make a podcast because honestly it’s pretty easy.

You’ll learn to find your voice. You’ll learn to find the others and together in this proven Workshop. That’s back again, you’ll discover That you can make a podcast not to make money because unfortunately, you probably won’t but to make a difference to be heard and to find the people who want to hear from you which is even more important. I hope you’ll check it out, visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming workshops, go make a ruckus.

The parallels between Bertrand better are and of course, Alexander Hamilton are extraordinary. They just keep coming from the year. He was born to his reputation. First up and then down, but that’s not what we came to talk about today. We came to talk about the day he quoted. Adam Smith to Napoleon Bonaparte what Adam Smith chronicler of politics and capitalism wrote was to found a great Empire for the sole purpose. Purpose of raising up a people of customers May at First Sight appear a project fit, only for a nation of shopkeepers. It is, however, a project altogether unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation, whose government is influenced by shopkeepers. We’ll talk in a little bit about what Smith meant, but Bertrand who was in and out of Napoleon’s life, probably quoted.

Um Smith to Napoleon at the end of Napoleon’s career. He was banished to st. Helena and they sent along a doctor a surgeon Barry, Edward O’Meara from Ireland, it’s from him. That the quote, the rise of Lee stated about England as merely a nation of shopkeepers began to spread the insult was simple. The insult is all they know how to do in. England is be merchants not Heroes, not adventurers.

Not Builders, but a nation of shopkeepers after this idea took hold dr. O’Meara went to Great pains to write the following your meddling in Continental Affairs, and trying to make yourselves a great military power. Instead of attending to the Sea and commerce, will yet ruin you as a nation. You were greatly offended with me for having called you a nation of shopkeepers.

And I meant by this that you are a nation of cowards. You would have had reasons to Displeased, even though it were ridiculous and contrary to historical facts. But no such thing was ever intended, I meant that you were a nation of merchants and that all your great riches and your grand resources arose, from Commerce, which is true. What else constitutes The Riches of England?

It is not extent of territory or a numerous population. It is not mines of gold, silver or diamonds. Moreover, no man of sense ought to Shamed of being called a shopkeeper, but your prints in your ministers appear to wish to change all together l’esprit of the English and to render you, another Nation to make you ashamed of your shops in your trade, which have made you what you are and to sigh after nobility, titles and crosses. In fact to assimilate you with the French. You are all nobility. Now, instead of the plain old Englishman to be a nation of shopkeepers.

Ours is to be aware of the customer, is to be someone who shows up and tends to the store on hours that you set for yourself to be aware of your competition, to seek to do better to serve the marketplace, so that you in turn can come out a little bit ahead. England was a nation of shopkeepers. The question, we ask ourselves is what kind of nation, Are we building?

And I’d like to pause it for a minute, the hypothesis with apologies to bury Edward O’Meara, and to Adam Smith. Are we building a nation of Clerks? Not just a nation of Clerks, but a nation of consumers. So consumers. First at what age do we begin to teach children that their primary job is to consume?

Steve pressfield has written extensively about Sparta. A nation of Warriors or perhaps, we could think about ancient Greece Athens, a nation of philosophers. But what are the lessons that we teach a two-year-old? A three-year-old? And a four-year-old, when we hand them an iPad when we promise them something on Christmas, when they get dessert, if they eat all of their brussels sprouts, the idea is that it is possible to grow up to be a citizen by being a consumer that we send kids.

To school not with two pairs of shoes, which is what most kids had in the eighteen hundreds. But with closets filled with clothes clothes that change with the seasons because we don’t want to get left out that we couldn’t go to the mall during the pandemic and we missed it. And so we shifted dramatically to browsing in spending time online, not to browse and focus on things we could make better, but to focus Focus on things we could buy with just one click and sometimes, one click is too many and so instead we subscribe to something and it shows up. Unbidden it turns out that the company that sells treats for dogs by subscription is worth over a hundred million dollars by subscription because it’s too much trouble to remember to buy your dog, a new treat. And what about becoming a nation of Clerks?

Well, let’s think Matter. What do we look for in a clerk? While the clerk Works indoors. Follows instructions. Seeks deniability does what they are asked but no more figures out how to do just a little bit less because otherwise the boss will insist, they do just a little bit more, mostly the clerk wonders. If this will be on the test if people are keeping score, if they can stay where they are because it’s so fraught to fall off the the ladder because then maybe you won’t get to be as good a consumer anymore.

What is school? Traditional School in the western cultures and I’m counting India and China on that list. What is school but years and years spent training to be a clerk to take good notes to make, no mistakes to write down what you are told and to find out if it’s going to be on the test, the panda. Has been a test of so many things, but one of the things it has exposed is the fraud of school as a learning institution as opposed to one, that simply educates because we are training a billion people to join a nation of Clerks because the giant industrialists seem to need more clerks or at least they’re willing to tolerate more clerks so that they can have more consumers.

Merchants on the other hand, Merchants are busy trying to solve interesting problems. Open new markets, innovate discover new ways to connect with people to enable cultural shifts to happen, because all of those things, those initiatives, those efforts that we take sometimes, at risk to change things to maybe make things better by making better things. This is the work of a merchant and the merchant doesn’t have to do it for profit a merchant. Can be at the helm of a nonprofit that seeks to get people more food or to get them to take their medicine or to develop new technologies because all of those things, use the skills of the merchants.

So it probably not too late but I think we have to have a conversation. What is school for? Are we trying to have more clerks? What will we do once we have enough clerks? And what about consumers? What will we do? When enough people have enough stuff? One of the things we know about shopkeepers is that they desire their freedom, the freedom to innovate, the freedom to make decisions the freedom to lead, its their clerks, that want to be told what to do.

But the shopkeepers the merchants they are looking for. The next Frontier. Ironically within barreras controversial Arc from being the head of the trial that led to the Of a king to his eventual disgrace and Exile from Paris. He argued for a system of Education throughout France, A system that would be focused on the Pledge of Allegiance, learning the alphabet, and the teaching of multiplication tables. In fact, he was one of the fathers of creating a nation of clerk.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I’m not sure exactly where it goes, but it’s something worth thinking about. We’ll see you next time. Time will be back in a second, with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor. It’s Maria. Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading sound. This is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new pal, this is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. Christian is and that completes my question as you know, I do love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, please, visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button.

There are show notes there as well.

First, a question about education. Hi, Seth. Steve glandt leader here from Chicago, Illinois. I was just listening to your podcast on the magnification of small differences and the part about the future of Education. Really got me thinking about how online coursework and accreditation can really take hold, and what could start it and I say, like a lot of the education. Air has to do with social status and economic status and your comments had me thinking about, whether you could start a almost maybe a b Corp or start as a nonprofit that is essentially a free education course, that self-guided and online. And as it grows, you could add in video course, instruction with actual certified instructors and and guest speakers. Because I think in general, Lot of people want to help other people, learn what they know, it’s sort of part of your legacy. So the point of the question is whether this new education Source? May be a Grassroots and almost a free process and then would become funded for operations. Obviously, the pay for, you know, keeping the lights on and servers and being able to facilitate a good experience for the users, but the actual funding of it could be Source through Either donations through individuals that finish the coursework donations of people’s time, maybe even donations through people who finish the courses and we’re able to gain good careers and want to give back that or even corporate sponsorships where you know, they may want to hire the good self motivated employees and versus trying to interview college graduates who, you know, have proven that they could finish a course work. Work and be a good student instead focusing on hiring people who are self motivated to complete their education online.

I think maybe a way for people to set themselves apart as well. Look forward to hearing your response. Thank you for this Steve. It’s something I talked about a long time ago, but it’s worth revisiting. I do not believe there is a learning shortage online. I think you can learn a foreign language for free. I think you can learn math. I think you can learn just about any course. That’s taught at MIT that the Khan Academy can teach you, plenty of things that happen before you go to MIT learning is not the same as education.

Education is about certification and accreditation about conforming and about compliance. We go through education, to get a scarce piece of paper to prove that we are part of an elite group and we use that piece of paper to put ourselves into positions. As of power or authority, where we actually do the learning of how to do our job or else we get fired. But education is about, will this be on the test?

It’s about who got in and mostly it’s about the window sticker on our car or on our parents cars because that window sticker. The status. That says, I am a good parent. My kid went to a college. You have heard of a famous college, a college with a football team. Willing to go into debt for the rest of their lives to get that sticker.

That’s different than learning learning is free. It is free online and it is free. If we are willing to put ourselves into the position of enrolling in a journey and then failing and failing and failing as we go forward in community to get better at the thing, we want to do. So your idea is not a bad one. There are plenty of Institutions online that are free. You’re really close to free compared to how much it costs to get an actual degree and yet most people aren’t doing them for the same reason that many people don’t read books because it feels like school because it feels like work because they’re not sure it’s going to be worth the journey.

So the hard part isn’t how do we make this online thing? Free the hard part is how do we create a new game? A new Ratchet, a new status symbol. That’s about the fact that you Projects that you know how to lead that you are connected that you’re doing work. That matters for people who care those things are much harder to label but we only started labeling higher education.

50 years ago it’s only recently that football coaches got paid for million 6 million dollars a year. It’s only recently that people ended up a quarter of a million dollars in debt to get that sticker. So yeah, I’m ranting but you get my point. If you want to learn something, go, learn something. And the best way to do that is in community, surrounded by others, creating a cycle of peer pressure. That gets us to where we want to go.

Thanks for the question. Hey, Seth, this is lightning. Lucas in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Question, regarding your recent episode, fueling the engines of division. You said that three or four or five, people would be all that. It would take to really turn the algorithm in a more positive direction.

But I think you and I both know that it’s doubtful that those particular powerful, five people will take such an action. So I’m wondering if you could go on a deeper dive into what US average people. Can do to help make sure the future of technology is in our favor, rather than not Bingo, great point.

It’s pretty clear to most people who have been paying attention that the game that’s played at the giant tech companies isn’t necessarily the game, we’d want them to play at once people make it far enough to be managing a public company to be surrounded by thousands and thousands of co-workers who all have stock options the game. I’m sorta gets Relentless as I pointed out last week when I was talking about Amazon, this Relentless idea of turning a ratchet in One and Only One Direction and doing as little as you can get away with in other directions. Because the thing you’re trying to do, in this case is maximized long-term shareholder value that whole Canard from Milton Friedman.

That’s not the only role but here’s a hypothetical. Let’s say. That Starbucks was putting something into the coffee. Adulterating it with something that was legal, something that the FDA wasn’t regulating. But something that gave us an earache, all day long, something that lowered the happiness of all the people who are going to Starbucks but due to their location and due to their customer service in the status that goes with going to Starbucks, people kept going and they kept getting less and less happy in their ears kept. Hurting.

Do we think that through Collective action? We would change the rules and say, hey, Starbuck, stop, putting that stuff in the coffee and I think history would show that we would. Well, in the case of the monopolies, the big five or six companies that are running. So many, the interactions that privilege folks, like, me or spending time in online, given that what are we going to do about it? Well, it’s clearly not going to be solved by the free market.

Because the market isn’t free because these Network effect driven. Businesses are natural monopolies and playing by the rules that were there. When they got there, they are not making us happier. They are not doing things that are leading to long-term positive changes in our culture. And so Collective action is needed.

The first one, which I’ve talked about is Cory. Doctorow is concept of adversarial. Interoperability basically letting anybody who wants. Us to build something that plugs into these platforms, because if you can plug into these platforms data can be shared outside of The Silo. So instead of there being one Facebook or one Twitter, there can be lots and lots of services that connect in and out and what this would enable is organizations to work for other purposes. Other than how do we enrich the shareholders at Facebook and part of it is it would be easy. Leave. Because once your data can be taken from one of these platforms and put somewhere else, then the platforms have to behave better because the free market goes back to being free.

Because the absurdity of the Starbucks example, is if Starbucks was really making people sick, you just pick a different kind of coffee. It’s harder to do that with the sticky systems, that these big companies are building all around us. So Collective action, the idea that the community is going to stand up and say, wait a minute, ten years in after giving you an enormous amount of freedom and the benefit of the doubt, you’ve made things worse, not better. So times up new rules.

You can continue to be relentless but just like you had a play by the old rules. You can have to play by the new rules and yes, as we’ve seen from recent news reports, those new rules include paying your taxes. So when you add all of that up, what I’m arguing for. Is there either going to clean up their act? And I don’t think they will.

Or we all of us, we have to do it with them and for them because in the long run, even the people there are going to benefit all the money in the world doesn’t help if you’re living in a culture. He can’t be proud of thanks for listening. I’ve been ranting today we’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to distinguish yourself as an No, institution, or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right? There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access. Information that’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you, when you got to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t No, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -compared-to-what- <==

The blackout was total and it was worldwide. There was no electricity, no lights, no air conditioning, no easily, accessed refrigeration. And everyone went without hey it’s Seth and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about compared to what but first. Here’s a message from our sponsor.

I’m talking about the blackout of 1812. In fact of all the years before 1812 1820, 1830, 1840. When there was no electricity and no one really missed it, they didn’t miss it because their neighbors didn’t have electricity. They didn’t miss it because they had never had electricity. And so compared to what we navigate our days on this planet, by looking around by understanding what Going on in the culture and then making a decision about our state, Ambien is a popular sleep medication particularly in the United States.

Here’s the question. How much extra sleep do you get? If you take ambient as directed according to one study, I read 18 minutes. You get 18. Extra minutes of sleep over an 8-hour period of time by taking this powerful drug. So, if you’re only getting 18 minutes of Sleep with a drug with side effects. Why on Earth do people take it?

Well, it turns out that ambient is an amnesiac, it makes you forget that you didn’t sleep that. If you forget that, you didn’t sleep. Apparently, for many people, the next day is better because you’re not carrying around a story of defective sleep. You’re not wondering whether other people slept better than you that somehow you. Your behind back before the big blackout of 1840.

When people went to sleep, they often woke up at 1 o’clock in the morning. Had a snack hung out with family. They went back to sleep for what was called second sleep. It was normal to not sleep in one place for eight or nine hours in a row compared to what and marketers are complicit in our dissatisfaction because as mass Media came along industrialism was also on the rise and they were the perfect couple because industrialist needed a way to sell more stuff because they were making more stuff than ever before.

And mass media, was this magical tool that helped them sell more stuff. And usually when we think about mass media, we say, well, yeah, because you could put an ad in front of a lot of people, but the other thing that radio, and then television did was sell people around the world on peace and pus. Feherty on quote, the American dream and on attainable satisfaction that if you just bought this item, your life would get better that if we think about the great sitcoms of the 1960s Most of them involved lives that could at least be visualized by most of the people who are watching them that the distance between you and living, like Andy of Mayberry or you and living a life like dick. And Laura Petrie on Bonnie Meadow Lane in New Rochelle. New York, wasn’t that wide was just enough to create dissatisfaction that could be solved by working a few more hours, working a little bit harder.

Cheering out how to get the money borrow it if necessary to buy that one next item. And so a ratchet started to spread and it was endorsed and paid for by mass marketers, because they understood that. If they could sell people on Ovaltine creating family Harmony while, then people would go buy some Ovaltine and the carrot strapped to the front of the donkey, kept the donkey move, V step by step, trying to bite the carrot.

But over time what the media has done is moved to carrot further and further away. Maybe it started with the tv show. Dallas my guess is it started probably before that? Because now we saw the lives of people royalty that we could never hope to attain, not just the royalty of spending money for a ranch or a private jet but the Unobtainable beauty that so many of the people in the movies or television were parading around the fairytale lifestyle. All of these things became unobtainable and so the Gap kept widening. Their what media did was give us something to compare to that. We couldn’t get our hands on that felt like it was frustrating as opposed to incentivizing.

And then we enter the world of social media because social media was supposed to be this thing of authenticity. Social media was supposed to be your neighbor, your friends, your classmates, but grooming went on social grooming. How do I put myself forward in the most perfect way possible? If my day has 1,000 moments, how do I find the four moments that are so perfect that are worth sharing and put them online for people to see.

Well, if you are surrounded by nothing but that then compared to what starts to kick in. And at the very same time, breaking news and catastrophizing got turned up many notches during the Vietnam war, you got the newspaper once or twice a day, you watched Walter Cronkite? And that was it. That was all the media that was available for the typical person to consume.

Now, the catastrophes are Around every corner they are around every corner for 24 hours, a day that Doom scrolling is a business model. There are billionaires who make a profit by making you feel nervous by making you feel like you have to do. Scroll some more somehow looking for Solace, looking for a way to make it all go away.

And so we’ve got these two pillars in front of us, on a regular basis, on one hand, the perfect life, the convenient life, the the easy life, the magical life, the life of a princess there. It is, you can see it with one click, but then turn around. There, the catastrophes waiting around every corner, there are all the things that just can’t possibly work.

Now, I don’t want to minimize either one of these things as useful motivators, we need to be aware of defects in our culture and Society, so we can do something about them. Walter Cronkite was a hero for Meeting up how toxic the Vietnam War was not just to people in the United States, but to the victims in Southeast Asia.

And in our current environment, citizenry need to speak up and stand up and do something about the injustices that are all around us. But that doesn’t mean it is useful for it to be The Narrative of our entire day and those things we aspire to those perfect cabinets made by the Carpenter on YouTube or that perfect complexion. That we see in a cosmetic video. Well, we get something out of vicariously experiencing Joy or Delight or Perfection. And I don’t want that to go away completely, but I think we need to remind ourselves that if there is a business model, if someone’s going to make a profit by manipulating us and changing our state, they are likely to try and it is up to us to decide whether or not We want to take the ambient whether or not we want an amnesiac, whether or not we want to sign up for a life of dissatisfaction or if our time would be better, spent weaving together community and making things better by making better things.

That’s my rant will be back in a minute. Init with answers to questions from last time. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading sound. This is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. – this is on the Pain Scale. Entire sir warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They sent this is Rex. Hey sir. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as, you know, I love to hear from you. If you got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button while you’re there. You can check out the show notes.

Hi, Seth. This is Tracy. Thanks for your podcasts and sharing your thinking. I really appreciate it. I recently listened to your podcast on the algorithm of division. It’s a complex topic for me because my job as a marketer is to reach Target audiences with information that is relevant to what they’re searching for, it’s especially important because many of my clients are Pharma companies trying to reach positions with new research that can Patience.

But aside from a customer’s initial search cookies, and retargeting someone who’s engaged with content has been the primary way to keep content in front of that customer with so much available inventory in this endless, digital ecosystem targeting would seem like a helpful tool for both audiences. The customer and the marketer, But cookies, as the targeting tags are called are being mandated to go away in a year or so marketers won’t be able to use them.

As a professional, who is also very passionate about Brands and how they show up in the world. I actually embrace the idea of a cookie Louis world. It’s a chance for creativity to replace cookies for Brands to really show up. Experientially not based on search algorithms, I’m hoping you can expand on the idea of Brands and how they show up in the cookie Lewis World.

Thanks again for all that. You do take care. Thank you for this. It’s so complicated. I will try not to talk for too long. But first some background for people who are just joining us or even for people who aren’t just joining us, cookies were invented for a very simple reason. The web was a dumb browser, he treated everybody the same way someone who came to a website 20 times was treated the same as if they’re only there for the first time and creating a small tiny tiny. Will file that was on the user’s computer that was accessible by the website enabled sites to do a very simple thing.

Tell people apart the rules in the early days of cookies were very clear the only cookie you got to see was the cookie you placed on someone’s computer. So when I was running squidoo which was before Pinterest or Facebook, the idea was that squidoo could place a cookie and then we would know if you were a user and could treat you differently than if you were a stranger. But that’s all we knew.

And then some people hack the system and came up with a way that there could be a universal cookie where you would pay a third party who had a little slot on your website and access to your cookie and other people’s cookies. And by combining, lots and lots of information as you traveled around. The web users were tracked, users had no say in this you – weren’t you given a vote in this? It just happened.

So the first thing is the whole thing was a fairly recent hack. Second long before cookies there was marketing and there will be marketing after cookies before cookies businesses figured out ways to deliver anticipated, personal and relevant messages to the people who want to get them. And it’s important to note that consumers do not care about privacy.

You gave up all of your private Iva see as soon as you got a credit card because the credit card company knows an enormous amount about you and that’s fine with you. What most people care about is in privacy, it’s being surprised. We don’t want the credit card company to suddenly call us up in the middle of the night and say we notice you’ve been staying in a lot of hourly motels and we think you’re having an affair. Would you like a coupon for some STD testing because even though that might be in our long-term interest It’s not a surprise we signed up for.

And so a lot of the push back against the misuse of cookies has been from people who say, why are these ads following me around the web? How did they know I was looking at that brand of shoes when I’m over here at a totally different website marketer sometimes Under Pressure race to the bottom short-term narcissistic profit-maximizing says, we don’t care what we’re going to do to the ecosystem or the culture. Let’s Keep spamming people. For as long as we can get away with it.

At the same time, the tech Titans saw that they were giving away power when they allowed third parties to have all this cookie access because you wouldn’t have to go back to buy fresh information from Google. If you could find that information in other ways, Google has a long history of finding useful things on the web like RSS and blogs or email newsletters and Bring them down because they understand that if they shut them down, marketers with money, will have no choice but to come back to Google and apple seeking to differentiate itself from Google because Apple doesn’t have a strong web presence. Even though they have all the money in the world, they don’t own any significant web properties.

And so as the web becomes more of an entity that doesn’t care what device you’re accessing. It with apple is figuring out ways to stand for something, so it’s users will pick them. Hence apples decision to shut Facebook out of the idea of tracking. They’re saying they’re doing it in the interest of privacy.

I think they’re mostly doing it in the interests of Market power. So with all that said, what does a marketer do? Well, you started your question by pointing out that your role is to help the $450,000. Years in the United States, get new medical information that they are looking for that they’re interested in and of those 450,000 docks I think it’s fair to say that there’s only 50 to a hundred thousand of them that are actually interested in the kind of medical information you have to share.

So paying all this money to chase people around the web based on guesses from incomplete. Cookie data, isn’t the way to build an entity for the Long Haul. The way to do it is to get the the active engagement of the docks. That’s why medical journals are so valuable because medical journals aren’t spam medical journals or something that doctors pay to read and thus the key tenets of permission marketing, anticipated personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

And the opportunity that marketers have is the same opportunity they had. When I wrote that book, 25 years ago, it’s simple if you own an Set the privilege of talking to people who want to be talked to everything else gets easier. Is it hard to build that asset? There’s no question about it. Will you have to change your business model? Of course you will, but that’s okay because the business models keep changing.

All of us who are living on. The web are doing some of the didn’t even exist three decades ago. And so it’s going to change again and the race continues to be the same race. It was then who has the right to privilege, the ability to talk to people who want to be. Talked to, if you think about Google’s multi-trillion dollar value, where does it come from?

Because the fact is a bunch of smart, programmers could build a search engine that most people couldn’t tell apart from Google. Plenty of people have built email engines and go down the list. What Google lives on is the fact that people trust them, the fact that people come There to do their searches, the fact that they have a connection to people right in the moment, they are looking for information but that doesn’t mean it’s permanent and it doesn’t mean that you can’t figure out in your Niche where you stand for something, how to earn the attention of people as opposed to going for a free ride with them.

I hope that helps. Thanks. My name is Matt and I live in Bangkok Thailand and I feel like I kind of live under a rock because I just recently found out about your podcast on akimbo after having read and loved your books and any case I have a question and that’s when, is there going to be critical mass on really an understanding that if anything, the pandemic has really allowed us to do things differently and has created a real sense of resilience.

And so when, when do you suppose will be the Time when we finally look back and go, you know what? We’re through it and we’re actually stronger than ever. So, again, thanks for everything you do. And I look forward to your answer. I wish I had a really Smiley optimistic answer to this, but if history is any guide, here’s what we know, natural disasters, man-made disasters, Wars famines pandemics, they come.

And if we’re lucky, they go. And after they go most of the people most of the time, forget the lesson that historians and leaders would like us to remember, history, doesn’t repeat itself, but it Rhymes. And unfortunately we have a culture that doesn’t really remember and so after a flood wipes out, huge sections of the Northeast people rebuild their houses right on that Coast after we we see the enormous cost of racial Injustice of caste systems of treating people as separate as lesser.

Well, maybe we fix that one but then we turn right around and do it again because human beings, at least in the west, at least in the 20th and 21st, centuries are confident that this time, it’s different and they’re confident that they’re right. Because the media keeps reminding us that This Time. It’s Different In the media understands that the easiest way to sell us, something is to remind us that we were right all along, so getting us to change our long-term habits because we learned a lesson, that’s not, usually the way change happens. So generally the way we change our minds is not because we learn an important historical lesson, it’s because there’s a tumbling, a tumbling of dominoes.

If you think about how we ended up with our fear of nuclear weapons, Weapons which has persisted much longer than I would have expected. It’s not a straight line from her Oshima and Nagasaki to today. It in fact changed the minds of some people, some leaders who stared right at it and blinked and those leaders then change the minds of dozens of people around them which then started to reach into the media. And then, and then, and then, and then, and this cycle of all, what we’ve always I felt that way is the way most people think about culture and it gets there slowly not all at once.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable. And in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, No. And none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you got a face, that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you, when you got to face those fears, I’m not Gonna let you hide.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information. We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the The success stories I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-river-of-time- <==

I live about a mile from a mighty River. Well, the Hudson isn’t actually a river, it’s a tidal Estuary. It’s a few word. It’s filled with brackish water, half salt and have fresh half of the day. 12 hours, the water flows in one direction from the ocean and then the other half, it turns around and flows. The other centuries ago, there were so many oysters in the lower Hudson River that they were essentially free.

Years ago. The Hudson River was plied by fairies, back and forth, up and down. It was a Waterway. It was a shared reserve. It was the lifeblood of this neighborhood. Hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo, we’ll be back in a second to talk about shared resources, Liberty and freedom, but mostly questions.

But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Akimbo is back, running it again to find out more visit akimbo.com go for all the details the people Meat will change your life.

Not a lot of answers this week but plenty of questions to think about. So let’s start with this. If you are a giant multinational corporation and I don’t know, maybe it rhymes with enter elf electric and you have a plant on the shore of the Hudson River land. You own, is it okay to dump tons and tons of pcbs into the river because it’s cheaper for your plant to do that. Then it is to dispose of them in some other way.

Well, you probably guessed that after they dumped, all of these, toxic chemicals into the river. It had long term consequences for plenty of people and various forms of nature All Along The River. All right, how about this? If you own land on both sides of the Hudson river, is it okay to string a tight cable from one end to the other so that boats can’t pass?

Okay. About this, if you have a jet ski, is it okay to zip up and down the river? Past homes @midnight with your unmuffled? Loud exhaust waking everybody up. We have a lot of questions to answer about what we’re going to do with shared resources and in the case of things like Rivers, we’ve been trying to answer those questions for a long time.

It’s generally understood That the community has a say in what you’re going to dumped in the river, that’s going to affect people who are down stream from you. But now we live in communities where there are rivers, maybe not physical Rivers, but real Rivers everywhere. We look, if you have an acre of land next to a neighbor, who has an acre of land, and you love milkweed and other plants that create lots of pollen.

Are you allowed to plant it? Entire field of that even though your next door neighbor will suffer severe allergies as a result. Well, generally speaking you can you can because we don’t judge pollen in the air as the same sort of toxic waste as dumping pcbs into a river. I think most of us have a pretty good idea about shared resources, like Rivers about the fact that it might be okay.

The storm drain to wash away some of the residue from your yard, or your orange trees, but it’s not okay for people to start dumping sewage into the river, simply because it’s more convenient. Particularly if it’s going to make people sick kill all the oysters and degrade the quality of life for everyone.

But what happens if we think about rivers a little bit more metaphorically, what if we think about the river of time? Unlike the Hudson River the river of time, generally only goes in One Direction Unless you ask HG Wells this River of time when it starts here and goes forward is something that affects all of us as we think about standards in our community.

So for example, most communities have figured out that an educated populace that when you spend the time and money to educate 6 year, olds or nine year olds teaching them to read and write to understand science and other things they will grow up down the river of time. Time to become better contributors to the culture that all of us benefit when kids are educated. So, on behalf of the kids who don’t have a say in it, the community speaks up and says all kids have to be educated and on behalf of the parents. The community says, and we’re going to pay for it and hence public school, and I’m hoping that most of the people who are listening to this agree with me that Levying a tax on all of us so that kids can be well-educated. Seems like a really sensible idea but once we start going down that road one of the questions is is it okay for those kids to be opted out of the public school that we’re all paying for and go to a private school instead?

And then if they’re going to a private school, should the taxpayer money that would have been going for them to go to public school? The I created for them to go to private school and then what happens if the private school they go to doesn’t teach them things of use. What if after 8, or 10 or 12 years in this facility, they don’t know how to read and write.

What if instead of teaching them science as we understand it in a useful way, they’re teaching them things that are closer to mythology that aren’t practical or useful and that might even be divisive, how do We decide to fill the river of time and that leads to beginning to understand things about capitalism, Liberty and freedom. Many of you have heard me. Say before that, the purpose of culture is not to enable capitalism. The purpose of capitalism is to enable culture. In other words, capitalism is the special case? Friend told me about the difference between a Navy pilot and an Air Force pilot in the United States, Air Force started. They were the first people The airplanes and there are volumes and volumes and volumes of rules and regulations and the rule for Air Force, pilots is follow. All the rules in the books.

Navy pilots on the other hand, have just a few manuals and the rule for Navy pilot is if it’s not in the book, you can figure out what to do. So one is about avoiding getting in trouble and the other one is about finding your own Own Way Forward. And when we think about the difference between those two, when we think about capitalism, one way to think about it is, the default is everybody can do anything. They want with liberty and freedom to create the most value for themselves. Selfishness first, and then culture Community, they have to come up with the special exceptions that aren’t allowed.

The alternative. The one that has been around for tens of thousands of years. Is that culture says, these are our standards, these are the things that are sacrosanct and in any spaces that aren’t carved out, you can do anything that you want because that enables the market economy that enriches, so many of us, and that is part of the challenge that we’re facing in our culture today.

Which is it is tempting to say that. I am responsible for everything that I do, leave me alone. But the rivers the rivers of time, the rivers of connection, the rivers of culture and the rivers of rivers are now far more intertwined than they have ever been before and so when we put an idea into a kid’s head it will pay dividends or costs for generations to come.

Here’s a simple example. Is it okay for Private Industry? To say, we are going to discriminate against people like women black people, people of color indigenous, people, people who have traditionally been discriminated against, we are not going to hire them, and we were not going to promote them because we don’t have to well, over the last few Generations. I think we have seen the toxic long-term implications of this. And we have created this idea of the protected class of people Where we say, yeah, you can say, I’m not going to hire a left-handed people, and you can say, I’m not going to allow people who come to my office to wear earrings.

But no, you can’t persist in maintaining a caste system one that costs everyone, an enormous amount in terms of justice and Civility and potential. No you can’t do that but we keep coming back to these edge, cases edge cases about who you can serve and who you can’t serve. Edge cases about what are the long term and short term implications of using this chemical or having that policy?

Should we treat big companies monopolies different than we treat little ones? Is it okay for Apple to say we’re not going to allow certain kinds of businesses to be in the app store because if they do that then de facto they are keeping lots of people from seeing those apps. On the other hand, if it is completely wide open, then how do we hold people responsible for creating things? Perhaps anonymously that are toxic to the culture in the world around us and I don’t know, the purpose of this podcast is in to tell you the answer, but it’s to get us to think more clearly about the questions.

Which river are we dumping stuff in? What are the repercussions Generations from now? What will people? People say if Elon Musk builds a supersonic airplane, is it okay for him to fly it? Wherever he wants regardless of how much carbon it dumps into the air? Is it okay for him to take off with a sonic? Boom?

That you here every night when you’re trying to sleep? Is it okay? If that Sonic, Boom breaks the windows of your house and you have to pay money to replace them. All of these things are on a spectrum. Mm. And there is no doubt in my mind that two or three generations from now. People are going to look at the carbon we left behind, and they’re going to say, what were you thinking, and they’re going to pay attention to just how deep in equity was both, in terms of income distribution, but mostly in terms of opportunity, because opportunity creates New Frontiers, it creates connection, it creates value.

And every time we do what capitalism pushes us to do, which is the short term, Expedient convenient thing we might very well be shutting the door on the long-term, resilient powerful, bit of possibility instead. So I don’t know the answer. But my hunch is that the more we think about it and the more we engage with it, the better we’re going to get.

Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second, with some questions from previous episodes. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor When is it time to level up? What is it? Time to learn a new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp, an independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.com. Go to find out about their new Upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks.

Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. – this is on the phone. This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey Sun. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I love to hear from you. If you got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki am Bo dot link-16, click the appropriate button. Three interesting questions this week. Here we go.

Hi. Seth Charles Porter, in Montreal, Canada, messy, purple Colour, thanks for your work, listening to your recent rant on education. I find myself wondering how to pull the lever of motivation. While I am a self-starter. And I’ve learned things from Photoshop to interesting Financial Concepts. I have also offered training back in the day, I offered PowerPoint training to a whole group of people and I offered it for free.

No one took me up. Three months later, I offered the same training and charge a very nominal amount. 35 people showed up part of what I did was offer them half of their money back if they actually showed up. So where do you You see the bonus and the lever of paying, for what you’re receiving and is one of the weaknesses of our current, give it away or the current build it and offer. The free is one of those weaknesses, that money for better for worse, remains a powerful, internal drive for which people purse. See the value and that without a lack with a lack of perceived value, people will not engage in the Education and Training learning that they need to thank you for this Charles.

The thing is that money is two things, not one, it is a transfer of value. It is a way of paying our bills, but the other thing it is is a story. We Tell ourselves a story about the things that we are buying whether we’re a business spending, 20 million dollars on Consultants or an investor deciding that a stock is undervalued or somebody taking a course on PowerPoint which is free or not free. We tell ourselves a story about guarantees.

We tell ourselves a story about, getting a refund, getting a kickback. All of these things are separate from the fact that money is what we use. To pay our bills. So when you showed up to your friends and colleagues and said I’m going to offer this course for free. What they probably heard is you are viewing it as either a hobby or a gift and they were viewing it as something they probably weren’t going to take. Seriously. They decided their time was worth more than what you or they were going to put into the course but when you showed up and said this course costs money, you were making a promise.

And they looked at the money and they looked at you and they said while Charles is the sort of person who would take this seriously if we were paying. And so if I’m going to show up, I need to take it seriously. And you can see all the ripples that are caused by this. We know that you can take almost all the courses at MIT for free or you can pay Thirty forty thousand dollars a year to take them in person.

Why is it that people who take them for free are Much less likely to finish them. Part of the reason is you don’t get a degree that piece of paper that magically confers some sort of value but a big reason is because they didn’t pay for it. So as we enter more and more of a digital age, we need to think about not what the marginal cost of delivering something, is it costs? Nothing for one more person to listen to this podcast. So pricing it that way, makes no sense.

But instead Ted. What is the story? What is the story of money were telling? And how will it change the outcomes that we seek?

I started under here from Brazil. I like to rant about merchants and shopkeepers. And one of the things that came to my mind, when you, you know, way raise the status of merchants is that the English merchants in, now, we know where thieves and they stole precious materials, and Gold from and using the slavery as their main Force around the world and of course, at a time, the English culture might not perceive them as thieves, but rather explorers or merchants or doing business as usual.

But now, we know different and have a different perception about what it means and when we come to the recent times I guess, Many companies might have this Merchant mentality and do whatever they want. If they’re in the law if it’s applicable propria tour. Not so they don’t matter. As long as they get the business done or innovate in a way that for them bricks.

Peace. Thanks hydrate you brought up a couple points here. First of all the history of colonialism and imperialism is a travesty it’s filled with trauma and selfishness. It is a crime against humanity but I want to point out that the people you are talking about weren’t Merchants. They were industrialists. They were colonialists. They were using power to take what they wanted.

The merchant was the last Up in the chain, the merchant is the person who says, what does this person right in front of me, want to buy and how much are they willing to pay for it? So a merchant is the person who brought the first banana to Philadelphia and sold it for $100, but that doesn’t mean they’re not complicit because without Merchants at the end of the chain, the chain starts to fall apart. So I think the core part of your question, isn’t the semantics of what someone Urgent or not.

It’s what our Merchants responsible for. Is the customer, always right? Should we give people exactly what they want? If a nine-year-old wants to buy meth or crack or some sort of addictive, Dangerous Drug, is it okay to sell it to them? What if it’s an adult, all of a sudden Merchants have decisions to make about which wishes are they fulfilling on the part of customers? And what do they know about the supply? Chain.

And the side effects to long-term repercussions of the thing that they are bringing to the world and they’re really only two ways to look at. This one way is to say, Merchants have zero responsibility. If it’s legal and the customer wants it. They should sell it to them. The other way to look at it, is to say that Merchants have an enormous amount of responsibility because they and they alone have insight into all parts of the supply chain.

They can look upstream and Well, yeah, but this fabric was made by slave labor, or these minerals came from conflict zones, where people were working against their will. And no, I’m not going to go there. Because if I do, that’s a race to the bottom, and then others will have to go there as well, that we could be held responsible for the short and long-term impacts of the things we decide to sell.

I for one would have it no other way because otherwise you’re just a Mindless. Cog in this weird invisible hand. System of capitalism where you’re not responsible for anything. I think that marketing is powerful enough being emergent is powerful enough that we can change the culture. And if we’re changing the culture, I think it’s on us to own the fact that those side effects. The effects, the ripples of the changes. We make are at least at some level on us. So, no, I don’t think you can blame the customer.

I don’t even think you can blame the colonialist or the To is cutting Corners. I think, at some point, the merchant has to say, not on my watch, I’m going to race to the top instead of racing to the bottom. Hey, Seth, it’s Rossi from Cape Town. I have a marketing question for you. So, I have an online account on LinkedIn, which has been very useful for building my business, which is a strongly linked to the old industrial economy and plays within those confines. I also have my more enjoyable, more creative blog account.

And this is a side hustle for me, and I Want to Build It Up. Up. But I when I try and Link the two areas of work. So if I try and post blog creative blog post to my LinkedIn account, it seems to clash strongly in terms of the, the brand and the message. Thank you. Russ will get a little bit more mundane here. Having just gotten pretty philosophical.

The question is, what’s an identity? What’s a brand in this world anyway, on social media, what does it? In for your account to have a name or picture associated with it, all of us apparently our our own logos. All of us have our own Brands. What is a brand for a brand is a promise. A brand is a way of saying to somebody who might engage with you.

This is what you should expect. When you engage with me. It is a foreshadowing of the future to come. So there is no complete identity online, no one will ever know. Oh the true. You they cannot know who you are from a tweet or a blog post. So we are always putting on a show. We are always showing up and presenting to others in the way we would like to be seen as part of the promise, we make at our brand makes so if st. Pauli Girl and Becks light beer, came from the same Distillery and are, in fact the same beer, I don’t think it’s disingenuous for there to be marketed as Years.

Because part of what we buy is the story around it. So if you’re busy making promises to people in an industrial economy, it’s not clear that being clever and being a poet is going to help them and thus, it won’t help you there. What we do when we show up is we show up for the others. If you go in to see a heart surgeon, and this heart surgeon, in their spare time is a stand-up comic do Doing racy content. I don’t think you need to know that and I don’t think they should try out their new material on you as you’re facing something that’s life or death.

You came for a surgeon. And the surgeon should present in a way that gives you confidence as long as they can keep that promise. Because again back to Andres question, that’s what we’re doing. Is we’re making a promise we’re making a promise to say I’m not a cog in the system, I’ve chosen to be here in this. Way for you.

And this promise I’m making, I fully intend to keep it consistency. Is worth way more than authenticity. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable. And in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, Anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information. That’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

We don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me. Not just possible for the success stories. I see out there but I can show us consider the alt and be a more than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com

==> -whats-the-office-for- <==

Here’s a question. We don’t ask very often which is surprising given how much time and money. We spent laboring under our misapprehension about the answer to the question. Here we go. What’s the office for? Hey, it’s F and this is akimbo, will be back in a second to talk about Dunder, Mifflin, cop. Copy machines, NCR, and the coffee maker. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor itself and this is a podcast. It’s a podcast produced by Alex De Palma.

Alex is a bit of a podcast Whisperer Alex and I are inviting you to join us in the podcasting workshop. And this is Alex, De Palma, Seth’s co-teacher and producer in this class you’ll learn not just the Technology to make a podcast because honestly it’s pretty easy. You’ll learn to find your voice. You’ll learn to find the others and together in this proven Workshop. That’s back again, you’ll discover that you can make a podcast not to make money because unfortunately, you probably won’t, but to make a difference to be heard and to find the people who want to hear from you which is even more important. I hope you’ll check it out, visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming workshops, go make a ruckus.

The office. One of the most popular TV shows of the last 20 years is not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the office where so many of us go to work or used to go to work. And after a year and a half of enforced, distance from the office. For the first time in a long time, people are thinking about the office, whether they should go back.

What’s the difference between a good office and bad off? Us what is the office even for? Like most things it probably pays to start at the beginning about where the office came from a couple office memories that I have three. The first one is years ago, I was pitching a new technology and I went to the offices of Polk Audio.

And if you’ve ever read any stereo magazines, you’ve seen the ads with the lab coats in the whole thing, poke audios offices were basically a little trailer connected to poke audios. Factory, which was basically a woodworking shop. And so, there was sawdust everywhere in the office, has existed to make sure that the people in the factory were doing their job and to sell with the people in the factory made.

I grew up in Buffalo, New York, my dad worked for a company that made Servo tronic controls and fancy electronics, and their offices were adjacent to the places where the machines were actually made their offices. Are fairly ramshackle for a company of that scale and it was run by Engineers. Lots of metal filing cabinets and the third was my friend, the late Lionel Poulin, the most famous and important Baker in all of France.

His office was right upstairs from the bakery. Every single day. He would spend part of his time in the office where he was making calls and selling the bread and a lot of his time downstairs with the Baker’s the origin of the office which is fairly recent hundred and fifty years older. So was a little alcove right next to the place. Where things got made people who worked in the factory. Often wanted to be having an office job because it looked a lot easier. You weren’t going to hurt your back and the people in the office. We’re spending a lot of time trying to improve the productivity of the people in the factory.

If we think back to the foreman whose desk is elevated so they can look down on everyone in the factory or the pharmacist who’s up there high to make sure that none of the customers are lost or shoplifting. This idea of the hierarchy is built in to the history of the office that the office exists to make sure that the people who work for the person in the office are doing what they’re told and are doing it efficiently.

Well. As office work started to create more and more value in and of itself, not simply helping the car company produce more cars per worker hour but to actually design cars that people wanted to buy and to figure out how to Market cars so that people would want to buy them and to how to do Financial Shenanigans.

So that the value of the organization would go up is operations were enhanced all of these things led to more and more people being The office as more people were in the office. They needed to hire people simply to take care of the people in the office just like a big Factory needs a whole team of people on maintenance detail.

Well, in the office, that means we’ve got clerks. It means we’ve got admins, it means we’ve got receptionist’s, it means you’ve got people making sure that the people in the office are as productive as possible. And if we look at the history of office design, like the Famous Johnson wax building Architects. Spent a lot of time dealing with a problem, which is that in a factory, we are really aware of the flow of goods that assembly lines. Make some sort of logistical sense that we can trace where a screw goes when it comes into the building, where it’s stored who needs to go and get it and how it’s put into the device on its way out the door.

But in offices, the flow was And as clear. So we had the typing pool of the secretarial pool. We had the whole idea of the front desk and the break room, these things were sort of backhanded attempts to figure out the flow, who knows who, who sits where we name the place, where the CEO sits the corner office, because the very name itself tells us something about information flow about the hierarchy.

And this went on for decades, it wasn’t unusual at all for an executive at a corporation to call in their secretary. Dictate a memo, then the secretary would go and type it and then that person would walk 20 feet down the aisle, and hand the memo to a different secretary who would walk in to their bosses office and hand them. The memo to be read by a second executive.

That was normal. And if we took Executives or office workers from the 1950s or 60s and plop them into an office from 2014, they would be shocked shocked at the informality of information flow. Shocked at the way, people were dressed at the way that they talked with an at each other shocked. It. So many of the ways that the office had dramatically shifted in 50, or 60 years, But we forgot to have a conversation about what the office is even for, because the office might be for a lot of different things. Now, the first thought is this, if there is a job that can be done repeatedly without a lot of innovation, it has probably been out sourced because organizations are figuring up for example that they don’t need to build an email server, they should just pay mail Chimp $20 a month because they know what the spec is of what they need, and they can just Outsource that to somebody else.

If you call a company and you think you’re talking to their customer service department, you might not be because a lot of companies have figured out, it’s better to just Outsource that call center. What an interesting phrase call center to somebody who’s in the business of running call centers. But lots of offices are or were significantly bigger than they needed to be simply for logistical reasons because one of the reasons that companies have offices is that CEO sort of like them, they like them because they enjoy having plenty of people in the office who are doing what they tell them to do.

They like them because they can justify adding marginal effort to the office Front, because even a little boost. In market share or P/E ratio pays for itself many times more than that person, you hired to be in the office and so we end up with caste systems and tired. Status rolls, we end up with people being manipulated, we end up with power games. We end up with people, people who are hooked on power acting it out in an office setting where they get to be the boss, the whole idea of an employee at will who could be fired at any moment? Ain’t for not pleasing.

The person that they work for a big argument, for the physical proximity of the office is communication email into a pneumatic tube and shooting it around a building, as the best way to communicate. From one person to another physical proximity Is Essential but the rules changed, they changed with email, they change with the telephone and most of all they changed with zoom because email asynchronous eliminates time. You don’t have to be in the same moment to communicate with somebody and then Zoom eliminates space that you can communicate with somebody else even if they’re not in the building.

Now it’s worth noting that most large organizations have more than one office. Anyway, so we had already drifted from the idea that you need to see someone face-to-face to communicate with them. But business travel people, shuttling all over the world at a great carbon cost kept growing and growing. Because there is something to be said for impersonal, communication, a lot of it had to do with the emotional commitment of showing up.

So, the office evolved from this thing where we needed a bunch of people in a room because there was no other way around it to a demonstration of emotional commitment. But while that’s going on, we also have offices as warehouses for clerks. And while that’s going on, we also have the idea that you have tools.

Now we can’t have people building cars from home because it’s really hard to put a punch press in your Backyard. But back 20 30 50 years ago when you needed a wang word processor and you needed all of the tools of the copy machine in the rest to do your job. You needed to go to a building where all of those things were but also like Zoom that shifted it shifted. Because once you have a laptop, you own the means of production that most of the time in most offices, the only tools people are using is Top and a telephone.

And so we have eliminated that desire as well. I think it’s now worth taking a minute to realize, there’s more than one kind of office. There are offices giant banks, for example, filled with people whose only job is to not screw up filled with people who are getting paid a lot who are afforded a whole bunch of external respect, but their job is to be in sync to go to Enough meetings to double-check enough things that they don’t embarrass themselves because the bank is making so much money that the only job is don’t screw up, but there’s another kind of office and this is the kind of office to get talked about by people. Like me by people on the net by people have the time to talk about change and this is the office whose job is not to figure out how to not screw up.

Its job is to change things that the reason companies. Hey, a lot for this sort of White Collar work is it’s hard to find people who will bring the energy and the passion and the emotional centeredness to a problem to come up with an original interesting solution who can actually grow market, share, not just maintain it.

Who can solve interesting problems. And there are offices now and then that add to that magic. I remember walking into the fast company offices in Boston. Now and always leaving with more energy than I came in with because what Allen and Bill figured out how to do through architecture, through hiring through leadership is create a place where the energy and the optimism was contagious.

This is the office of a good exciting movie like the front page where newspaper people are. Pushing each other for the scoop where we are talking about, how do we go to work to Things better not simply to find our place in a pecking order, a hierarchy to play it safe to get through the day. TGIF is not one of the features of this sort of office.

So when we think about this sort of office, we have to realize, it’s conflated with the old kinds of offices. That when Google set out to build a different, kind of office, with the lava lamps, and And the ball pits and the notorious Chef, who used to cook for the Grateful Dead. They did all of those things because they wanted a campus and they wanted a campus because they were intent on changing things, changing things in a big way, but like most organizations as they got bigger, they lost the thread. So maybe they kept the ball pits. They definitely kept the fancy food, but most of the people who work at Google are trying to change anything there. See We try to keep things the way they are because they want the stock price to go up on a regular basis.

So culturally, we conflate the lava lamps and we can flate the fancy offices with the ability to change things. That’s a mistake. So going forward, the question we need to ask is what kind of office is this anyway, are we here to put on a show for the boss where the people who work for the boss or the people who work for the people? Who, who work for the boss?

Is it a show about how many hours we put in. So we better be on the zoom call to show our compliance and our obedience because that show is really expensive and it’s expensive. When you’re doing it from home, it wears this out and it’s expensive when they’re doing it in the office. And I think a lot of these big organizations are going to take a look around and say, we don’t need that much compliance and we don’t need that many people and there’s going to be a move to hollow out a lot. A lot of the overhead in these institutions because technology coordination, makes it much easier to get away with fewer people.

And for the organizations that want to change things, well, they’re still going to need something to shift the emotional posture of the people who work there because working together is a great way to get through our individual fear. How do you create that? Esprit de corps. How do you create that environment where people are willing to extend themselves emotionally, and with energy to put themselves on a limb to Champion, a new idea, a better idea one that meets skepticism when it is first discussed. And yet people crusade to push it forward.

That is the highest yield of most offices. And that is something that’s going to change. Once the people who are willing to sign up for that have choice Is. And so I think we’re about to see an upheaval in how we spend our day and whether or not we commute and whether we’re sending more money to the dry cleaner for an outfit that serves no real utility.

What does it even mean to go to work? It is called Truly Deeply ingrained in us. If you grew up in a blue-collar household going to work, means you go to the factory. If you grow up in a white collar household going to work, means you go to an office. Yes. But in both cases, it keeps changing. A keep shifting.

And going to work is something we need to do not just for sustenance to support our family. But to fill our days with something that feels like meaning and there are so many kinds of work but there were just a few kinds of offices and that’s going to diverge the culture is going to shift yet again, because technology isn’t going to wait around and organizations that need to go fast that need to innovate that need to Connect people, those organizations might not decide that the office of the future. Looks a lot like the office of the past, they might decide that. What is in front of them? Is this massive opportunity to coordinate the activity of committed people who are bringing emotional labor, soft skills, real skills, and insight to the table to put together resources and opportunities to make things better by making better things.

There’s no chance we’re going back to the office of 1957, and I think there’s little chance. We’re going back to the office of 2015. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.

This is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam. This is Rex. Who’s gonna hi? This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is And that completes my question as, you know, I love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button while you’re there. You can check out the show notes in this week’s show notes.

I’ll be putting a link to Theo sanderson’s up goer. Worksheet. Here we go three questions this week about words. In fact, I got more questions. Coming in about the billion dollars worth of words episode than any I’ve done in a while. I guess I should. If I want to maximize incoming questions, talk more about words and less about I don’t know the end of the world that being said, they’re all related, here we go.

Hey, Seth, this is lightning. Lucas again from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia Thanks for the episode about words. I really love words and I just wondering if you could Riff on the network effect in regards to words being adopted amongst People Like Us saying things like this. Thanks for all you do.

Thank you for kicking us off. Lucas. Yes, I failed to mention this words only work, when other people know what they mean? That’s fascinating because that’s not true for most of the things in our world. Most of the things in our world you can use quite happily by yourself. But as we all know, using words by yourself can make you seem a little bit, like an outlier, the network effect. The thing is that things.

Better when other people are using them, that applies more than just about anything to language. So our goal when we are deciding, which words to use is to begin with, who our audience is, to figure out either, do we need to teach them what a new word means are we trying to create tension around the words they don’t mean?

Or are we going to figure out how to use words that they understand earlier? ER I mentioned the up goer worksheet, it’s a website where inspired by Randall Munroe creator of XKCD. You can figure out if you can explain something using only the most popular, ten hundred words, why ten hundred? Because the number a thousand is not one of the most popular ten hundred words. It turns out it’s not that hard. Once you get the hang of it, but it might take you a little while to get the hang of it. And if you’re writing for a general audience, It’s if you’re writing for people for whom the language, you’re speaking might not be their first language.

This is a useful skill to master and if you want to coin a term I don’t know like permission marketing or the idea of Iris or the dip. Yeah, you could write a book about it, but it also helps to put that word into company of words that people already understand by Seth Jeremy from Lincoln City. A question regarding Adding your million-dollar words episode?

I’d like your view on when to use those million-dollar words and when to avoid them in relation to your smallest viable audience, when do you think it’s best to speak? Directly to that audience? Who is likely to understand those words and when to avoid them so that a larger public might be able to enter the conversation.

Thank you for your podcast. I enjoy nearly every episode. Thanks, Jeremy. This is a great segue from Lucas’s question, because if we just use words that are the most popular ten hundred words, we will have no trouble at all, reaching large numbers of people, but there’s a benefit besides the Precision of language to use language that only your smallest viable, audience, understand or at least Embraces when you talk about kerf. K ER f are useful Scrabble word and also something that Woodworkers understand it has you come across as more expert than if you say the space that’s made when the band saw cuts through the wood Cerf is a much better more precise way to say it and it establishes for your smallest viable audience that you know what you’re talking about because they know what Cerf is and if you’re not using the word Cerf, then maybe you’re an outsider.

You talk about kerning oh another four-letter word that starts with AK to a bunch of typographers. Again instead of saying the space between the letters, you know, the way they nest under each other, simply say Kern and you have established to them that your people like us. So that is a useful important reason to know the lingo and yes, the word lingo is an example of what I’m talking about because I could simply say no, the words that the other people know, No to show that they’re insiders or I could use an Insider term that most people who, like, language would understand, which is lingo not nearly as many points in Scrabble, though. Hello, Seth. This is a thin Davis. From Greenville South Carolina, and I really enjoyed your program about a billion dollars worth of words.

And reminded me about a question about the main knowledge and domain reading that I had after I finish reading the practice. You see, I work in the marketing department for a publisher of biblical worldview based K through 12, educational materials. And that means that we’re speaking to an audience about theology, we’re talking to them about education.

We also speak to a homeschoolers and beyond that, I’m really interested in marketing and all types of different kinds of marketing. And we’re asked to do a wide variety of kinds of marketing. And so I really appreciate your thoughts and Direction on how I should think about where I should focus in terms of studying right now. I feel like I read superficially across all these different subjects and I haven’t really become a master if any of them and I really appreciate your insights. Thank you for all you do really appreciate your work.

Thank you. Thank you. Ben for this practical way to finish these three questions. Here’s my tip. When you read trade magazines, when you read, popular texts are there words in there that you think, you understand. But you’re not sure that you sort of glazed over that you’ve danced around. Highlight, those words, what exactly does eleemosynary mean? I know you’ve seen the word. Ali mohsen are lots of times in the chronicle of philanthropy and you think, you know what it means? But what does it really mean?

And if you can track down, one or two or three words a day, that’s all and figure out what they really mean, you will discover more than vocabulary, you will discover Concepts because knowing a word helps us know, the concept of knowing a concept, helps us know the word. And so, we’re not simply learning vocabulary to signal to other people that were an Insider.

We’re learning vocabulary because being an Insider. Means that we understand how the systems work, we know where the overthruster is and why it’s hooked up to the manifold and you get the idea as always. Thanks for listening, we’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable. And in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age and you can get a great Book, a great essay, a great idea anywhere you know and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you going to show up, When you gotta face that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

We don’t have an I meant and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA. More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-rule-of-three- <==

So, a rabbi a priest and an alderman walk into the bar and the bartender says, what is this? Some kind of a joke. Hey, it’s Seth, and this is a Kimbo, we’ll be back in a second to talk about the rule of three and the irreversible binomial.

But first, here’s a message from our sponsor get better clients. It’s there. In three words, is the strategy of any freelancer. Who wants to do better work. Get better clients. You can’t work more hours but you can work.

For people who appreciate the work you want to do. They will push you harder. You will do better work. They will talk about you. You will get paid more. You will be more proud of what you produce, how to get better clients. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and we have built a workshop just For you, if you work for yourself, I really think you need to check it out.

It’s not a bunch of videos. It’s a workshop. You will work with other Freelancers. Working your way forward to figure out how to do this work that matters. I hope you’ll take a minute to check it out. Visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a Ruckus.

Even if you didn’t know the name of the rule of three, you’ve certainly We encountered it, The Three Stooges, the three pigs, The Three Musketeers.

Hello. The rule of three is an effective form of writing in which we list one thing. And then another thing, and then the third thing that is the motto of Superman fights, a never-ending battle for truth justice and the American way, but not just Superman’s motto. In fact, if we listen to the Prelude to Superman, Ann’s motto.

We hear the rule of three again again.

And yes, you guessed it again on a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive.

Able to LEAP tall buildings at a single bound up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s Superman. Yes. It’s Superman. Strange visitor from another planet who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. Superman who can change the course of Mighty River’s. Bend Steel in his bare hands and who disguised, as Clark Kent mild-mannered reporter for a great. Metropolitan newspaper, is there something magical About the rule of three, is there? Something hardwired into our brains? That makes triplets something that stick with us.

Here’s what Leonard Bernstein has to say about creating a Melody.

Well, the answer is repetition either. Exact repetition or a slightly altered repetition within the theme itself. It’s that repetition that makes the melody stick in your mind and it’s The Melodies that stick in your mind that are likely to please you the most Most popular songwriters know this and that’s why they repeat their phrases. So often just think of that big song Hit Mack the Knife ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba repeating over and over. Well the same technique works just as well in symphonic music.

Certainly, that’s what Beethoven did in his most famous.

Triplet first one statement, then a small variation of the statement does Set us up and then the final delivery. It’s also the way Curly Larry and Moe answer the telephone How about brother three-speed hello hello.

And then we can get to irreversible trinomials and irreversible. Trinomial are three words that go together in an order that we couldn’t reverse or move around without it, sounding really weird. You go to an ear, nose and throat. Dr. You talk to friends Romans and countrymen. There’s gold silver and bronze.

If you’re getting ready for work, you lather, rinse, and repeat you fell for that Hook Line & Sinker. You get the idea, but it would be really weird. If someone said action camera lights, because we’ve been taught one, two, and three Ready, set go. My friend Jason asked me about whether there’s something that makes the rule of three work. Why is it that jokes often involve three people walking into a bar, is that some kind of joke while there could be three theories here? One Theory might be. Yes, it’s the way our brains work. There’s something Universal, hardwired into us where moment. But Adana bow three things in a row somehow grooved into our brain, another theory, the one I had originally when I started Searching this podcast is that it’s a western creation that just as we have for for music here and they don’t really have four for music.

If you’re listening to say, table music in India, We perhaps have codified the three beat Rhythm into Western culture and because we’re so ethnocentric have determined.

It’s a rule of nature but I have a new Theory and my new theory is there’s really no such thing that 3 is. The number where we start noticing a pattern that if it’s just one well it’s one. It’s a There’s so many things that’s not a pattern, it’s just a thing. But what about to before, there were irreversible trinomials, they were irreversible binomials.

And there are far more of those fine and dandy back and forth above, and beyond alive, and well bangers. And mash bait and switch macaroni, and cheese, can’t say cheese and macaroni macaroni and cheese Flesh, and Blood forever and a day forever, and ever hard and fast ham and eggs. They hide and I don’t even know what that word means day and night. You get the idea, there’s two it happens all the time Abbott and Costello.

There’s a couple there is a pair suddenly to feels like a really stable situation and biologically to is sort of the way we are organized and then there’s four and four shows up in lots of places as well. There were actually More than three stooges and more than three Marx Brothers. For shows up in lots of places, just ask, John Paul, George and Ringo.

But also five five shows up in lots of places. So why have we fixated on three? Well, I think three is when we begin to notice that there is a pattern that, as a writer, I’ve adopted, the rule of three. I often write this thing, come of that thing. And the other thing, the Rhythm, Feels right to me but maybe the reason the Rhythm feels right to me is because I’ve been using it a lot, reading it a lot in countering it a lot.

Maybe the reason we have the rule of three is that we have the rule of three that it reminds us that something is coming.

Then if we started joke with a so-and-so and so-and-so and so-and-so, walk into a bar, we’ve announced somebody this is some sort of joke, maybe when their composure. Offers us one thing and then a slight variation and then the dynamic conclusion. They are alerting us to the fact that they also get the joke that they know, the rule of three, that they know how to Pace it and talk about it.

And so, I wanted to alert you to the existence of the rule of three because maybe we’re giving writers the benefit of the doubt. When we encounter it, maybe we’re feeling a little off, but it’s not quite three when it’s almost 3:00, but perhaps. Apps. The rule of 3 is just completely fabricated in a paper that I put in the show notes. At akimbo dot link, a bunch of researchers tried to investigate the famous rule of three for Behavioral indicators. With high specificity for bipolarity, in patients with major depression episodes, they did a univariate analysis of thirty six thousand seven hundred and forty two subjects and made a list of 29 markers that often appear things like More than three religion changes, more than three marriages cheating on their partner regularly, having more than 60 lifetime, sexual partners pathological, Love Heavy cursing, speaking more than three foreign languages, having more than two apparent, tattoos, circadian dysregulation and high debt.

And what they found is that 11 of these markers.

If you have three of them, it’s quite likely. You might need professional help. Again, the rule of three, we can’t get away from it. You just want to talk to you Marshall. See if we can work. Something out Daisy’s, we got anything to talk about, but if you want to say something you can say, from right there, can I come a little closer so and not shouting like a couple of drunken hobos? I can hear you.

Is it okay if I come a little closer that? Okay, you take one more step, I’ll shoot you. That’s all I’m going to say.

Marshall. I want to tell you something important.

For a really long time.

People honestly, believe there was a man in the moon because we are pattern matchers and we are pattern makers. We don’t know what to do when we look at something that might be blank or random and so we fill in the blanks and if you look really hard at the Moon, maybe you can see two eyes and perhaps that’s a nose or mouth, the rule of three, the pattern we look for patterns, that’s what we do.

And for the last word, One of the great Trio’s of all time, thanks for listening.

We’ll see you next time.

We’ll be back in a second with a question from a previous episode. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

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Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and How it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin.

Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new pal, this is Caitlin. Hi sir, warm, greetings from Curacao.

Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam. This is Rex. Hey son.

Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question. As you know, I do love to hear from you. If you’ve got a question about this or any previous episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link-16, click the appropriate button. Here we go.

Hi, Seth, this is Matthew in Phoenix. I have a question for you, about your recent episode about clerks in Mertens, what happens if you’ve been a clerk for many decades most of your career and suddenly you’re asked not to be the clerk. You ask for think like a merchant. How do you get your brain in your modus? Operandi to change so you can adjust to this new?

System, this new template. I am struggling with this and I would be interested in your comment. I love your show, I love your podcast and thank you for all you do. Thank you for this I really appreciate it. It seems to me that the answer is actually a question more than one question. The part of what happens when you are brainwashed into being a clerk is that you are pushed to not ask difficult questions that part of being a Work is to Simply look at what’s in the inbox?

Look at what’s on the manual. The instruction sheet figure out how to get by and put in A Hard Day’s work for a decent pay. That’s it. That’s your job. That’s the deal. But implied in being a merchant is a set of questions. Who’s it for who, exactly. Am I working with? And for right now, who is in front of me?

What do they believe? What do they want? What do they Fear. What’s it for this change? I am bringing to the world. What change am I seeking to make? How will I know if it’s working in the most traditional example of a merchant because you made a sale. But for the mindset, it’s, how did I bring something to this person?

This person I am seeking to serve in a way that makes a change happen, that is aligned with the promise that I made when I showed up for them, who’s it for. And what’s it for And then we can add a few more questions. One of them is, why is it like this curiosity, not accepting as a given the status quo, the system right in front of us. But instead, repeatedly asking why, if you ask, why five times in a row, you will get to the heart of what the person you are seeking to serve is actually looking for.

And so if we think about a traditional Merchants, you know, Macy’s or Wanamaker’s, most of the people, Work there actually clerk, but the merchants who run the place. Who innovate, who push things forward? And there are in short supply in traditional retail right now. Because most of them have become clerks are asking questions about? Why does someone buy a coat to begin with that? If you go into a store to buy shoes?

The odds are you probably already own a pair of shoes, you’re probably already wearing a pair of shoes. So what is it that you went into by understanding the story? We that someone tells themselves being able to see their hopes and their dreams and their pains and their fears understanding how they fit in society. This is a long list, I’m sharing with you, but it all begins with questions.

Asking ourselves, the questions opens the door to being able to find the answers. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable in in today’s world to distinguish yourself. As an educational institution or as a success, seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got. Access to ideas, you got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you got a face, that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, when you got to face those fears, I’m not gonna let you hide.

You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. And it’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -choice-theory- <==

Bergen County, New Jersey has one of the USA’s last blue laws.

Banning retailers from doing this.

Hey, it’s F and this is akimbo, will be back in a second to talk about blue laws about truth. So, and about Choice Theory, but first, here’s a message from our sponsor get, better clients there in three, A words is the strategy of any freelancer. Who wants to do better work. Get better clients. You can’t work more hours but you can work. For people who appreciate the work you want to do. They will push you harder. You will do better work. They will talk about you. You will get paid more. You will be more proud of what you produce, how to get better clients.

I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and we have built a workshop just for you, if Work for yourself. I really think you need to check it out. It’s not a bunch of videos. It’s a workshop. You will work with other Freelancers. Working your way forward to figure out how to do this work that matters.

I hope you’ll take a minute to check it out. Visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming workshops. Go make a Ruckus for a really long time. Hundreds of years, if you are in a small town in Italy, And one o’clock in the afternoon, rolled around everything was choose. So closed. People were taking the pause living, a gentle life, staying home. Maybe taking a nap eating with their family and then going back to reopen their store at three o’clock in the afternoon.

And Paramus New Jersey home of Alex Trebek’s famous. Blue laws is the last County in New Jersey. That enforces a suspension Of shopping on Sundays. This is pretty amazing since Paramus. New Jersey is basically one giant shopping mall. Mean a new stereo color TV? CB Call 645. 1196 for the most ridiculous prices, ever during crazy and he’s Christmas sale in August.

In those villages in Italy, the rules, stay the way. The rules are until a chain store, shows up until a big Supermarket shows up and they don’t close from one o’clock to 3. Three o’clock. They’re thinking goes the landlord’s charging us rent 24 hours a day. We need to make an income 24 hours a day. There are thinking is we work for the shareholders, not the employees.

There are thinking is there are people in this town who are tourists or who are at work and need to buy something. We will be open for them. And so we run headlong into this idea that capitalism is ultimately about markets and markets are Choice, Henry Ford may or may not have said you can have any color car you want, as long as it’s black, but what we do know is that once other people competitors, figured out how to make a car as inexpensively as Ford could Henry Ford’s opinion no longer mattered if you want fins, here’s a car with fins.

If you want white wall tires, here’s a car with white wall tires. The customer makes choices. Has and all of us live in a world where many markets are free, and we are spoiled by the presumption that free markets are the standard that we have a choice that the customer is King. And as a result, businesses have no choice but to offer choice, that it’s really difficult to build a business at scale in a competitive market where you insist that thing. They’re done your way, not the way the customer wants.

And so as we start to dissect, how culture works, one of the things we need to do is realize that in an economy that’s driven by a market. Many people investors and employees will work to limit choice that what people look for in an investment. For example, is a company that is approaching Monopoly, the one and only Is that because of structural mechanics or because of the way that they produce things, you don’t really have a choice.

We’re certainly seeing this with shopping on Amazon that bit by bit, as Amazon has gained scale, and they have been able to lower their prices. At the very same time. They increase their efficiency in delivering Goods. A lot of alternatives are going away. They’re going away because you get it faster and cheaper from And the argument is that once Amazon has eliminated, most of their competition, the simplest thing in the world for them to do will be to charge a little bit. Extra will be to lower service, just a little bit because both of those things in a market where customers don’t have much choice will lead, directly to profits to the bottom line and patient investors will get what they’ve been waiting for, Which is less choice, because in many Situations choice is a race to the bottom certainly, when it comes to profit margin.

And then what about the side effects? When we start to give people choice as adults? We like to think of choice as an unalloyed good thing that choices options, the ability to select what’s good for us. Feels optimal because when people choose, they get what they want now. Four-year-old speaks up and says, I would like the choice to stay up all night eating popcorn.

We say to that four-year-old. Not yet, you’re not an adult. There are costs to choices particularly if we’re not aware of them, and if we’re four years old, but in community in culture and commerce choices have side effects. So, for example, when we give the consumer in that little town in Italy, that A choice to go shopping at 1 p.m.

it has an impact on the life of the person who needs to be in that store. Because no longer are they at home for lunch with their family. The choice of the consumer who has the power, who has the money undermines, the choice of the employee, to be able to spend time with their family over lunch, because some businesses are open. And that means if there are Are open.

They will suffer and not be able to pay their rent and eventually disappear. Amazon has grown by giving its customers. An enormous range of choices Amazon sells more books than any bookstore in the history of the world. Amazon has more than 400 kinds of Japanese pole. Saws to choose from Amazon, gives consumers a choice.

But by doing, so they have put Enormous pressure on retailers, local retailers who offered something different to Consumers, and many of them have gone on a business. And many more will thus decreasing. The choices that are available in the long run or consider the options. Open to the person who wants to run a business. Should they be able to make the choice to have the table saws? They use not have safety guards.

Because by not installing safety guards. In the short run, they can produce the items, they make faster and thus cheaper. And thus give consumers in the world more choices about what to buy for their money. And yet once someone cuts off their finger with a table saw, they can’t get it back, no matter what.

So, when does the choice of the consumer or the choice of the owner, interact with the life choices and future of the person who works In the factory. There is no right answer and that is the point of this rant. The point of this rant is that we are always affecting some people’s choices by giving other people choices that when they put the blue laws in place in Paramus New Jersey and made it. So that every single business in the county that sells a certain kind of item cannot be open. They gave the owners and employees of Businesses freedom, to choose to choose a way to spend their Sunday, the freedom, to decide, how to live a life that isn’t always in the store. But they did that by taking away the freedom of the local Shopper to go shopping on Sunday and this has been litigated back and forth. It’s been the subject of referendums as a community, the referendums have always gone in favor of let’s close everything. Being on Sunday, that’s a choice.

Now, it’s been said that democracy is the single worst form of government except for all of the Alternatives and one of the challenges of the choice that’s driven by democracy. Is that it can easily outweigh the needs of a particular individual and as our culture revolves and gives more and more people, a platform, and a way to speak up on one hand, individuals are More heard and their need for choices, are being integrated into the range of things that are offered by Society.

But on the other hand, we’re starting to feel the Creeks around the edges because giving everyone a free choice all the time. Ignores the fact that choices have side effects that if we’re not careful, we will end up racing to the bottom and that will take away other people’s choices so I have no answer for us.

I’m just here to talk about the fact that we need to identify that choice theory is a real thing that what we need to think about is who is going to get a choice as we build this Enterprise of value, who is going to get a choice. When we build this internet tool, who loses choices, when it becomes a natural monopoly, when there is lock-in and people can’t go find another social network.

What happens when we add adversarial interoperability and give users the Choices to take their data and their social graph and go somewhere else with it who wins and who loses. I think as we consider all of the opportunities that the internet is creating as it. Rewires our culture, we’re going to have to consider also who gets to choose and who doesn’t thanks for listening?

We’ll see you next time. We’ll be back in a second with a QA. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor Sir.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo Dot. Cam go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi Seth Alicia from Charleston here. – this is an apology.

Caitlin, hi sir, warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth. My name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey son. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is And that completes my question as you know I love to hear from you and I get far fewer questions than you might expect. If you’ve got a question would like to give it a shot? Please visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link-16, click the appropriate button.

Here’s one from Dave. Hi, Seth. My name is Dave. I’m a composer and a teacher. My question has to do with shiny objects. I have a lot of ideas all of the time. Some of these ideas are creative. Others are more entrepreneurial, but how do I know when I’m onto a good idea? How do I know when I’m attracted to the object and not just attracted to the shiny?

I think of the shiny as the end to be gained the success the riches that await, if you will, when really most of the time, that’s just scarcity. So, how do I know when I find? And a good idea that’s not driven by scarcity. This not driven by the end result. Thanks very much for everything that you do, much appreciated.

Yeah I hear you. This is a common problem. People with ideas tend to have ideas. There are a few people who have just one idea but that’s pretty rare. If you get in the habit of exploring the fringes, you will find ideas. And then the question comes up, what are they for? Is it like humming a song? Every day just to entertain yourself if that’s the case hum away.

Inventing ideas that you never ship is a fine Pastime. But for many people, the purpose of an idea is to make a change happen. We do not make a change happen with an idea. The idea itself, accomplishes, very little. We make a change happen by implementing the idea by shipping, the idea by refining it by evolving.

By bringing it to the right, people by exploiting, the opportunity by expending emotional labor, by experiencing failure, learning and doing it again, and all of that can be exhausting and enervating and much of. It doesn’t work, and it all takes time away from that thing. We said, we like doing, which is coming up with the ideas in the first place.

So, how to dig ourselves out of this Paradox? Well, I have a very practical Question for you. And I’ve tried this with people who say, they have too many ideas, and it tends to focus the mind today is Wednesday, go ahead and give yourself five days, and five days from now, you need to have five ideas. Five of the ideas you’ve been carrying around protecting nurturing five ideas.

One page per idea that one page needs to explain. What’s the idea who’s it for what? For what’s the change? We seek to make? How are you going to bring it to Market? Where is The Leverage? A little bit of a roadmap about how to get from here to there, right them all up, five of them and then sit with a few trusted friends and say here are the five and force them to pick one.

Have a vote and whichever one, they pick you have to do you have to you have given agency to them? You must follow through, you set it up, they pick it. The reason this works is because you will approach that meeting, five days from now differently. Knowing that the only ideas you can bring to that meeting.

Our idea is you’re actually prepared to commit to, to do something about that. You don’t have to have the meeting in five days, you can just act like it and then when you realize, you’re not ready, you can cycle one or two more times, but then you got to have the meeting. Because the thing is ideas in private are safe ideas. In private are fun because we don’t have to expose ourselves to the market but if we’re here to make a change happen, we have to commit. We have to pick an idea. We have to be able to say here.

I made this. Thank you for caring about the work. Thank you for shipping the work. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable and in today’s world to English yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah. That’s good, you got access to ideas, you got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you’re going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you’re going to face the possibilities within you, what are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide. You gotta show up and that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask. That question, it’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show us consider the alt MBA.

More than three thousand alumni in 74 countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -big-games- <==

Some people don’t like games, but the truth is, we’re all playing them all the time. The thing is, some games are little games and some games are big games. Hey, it’s F and this is akimbo will be back in a second to talk about strategies tactics. Moves winning losing and the infinite game. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor Hi, spend it at you. And I’m here to talk to you about how you can become a better. Storyteller storytelling is not an art reserved for the Chosen Few. It’s a skill that you can learn just like the students have taken part in the story skills. Workshop of done, actually I had a story to tell that was really important for me but also was going to be very very important for people in the future.

It’s been absolutely Changing for me to see stories everywhere and to see my own stories, I was surprised that the learning was as much in the giving as in the receiving, we got to not only learn about storytelling. We actually got to practice using stories in our everyday life if you’re ready to become a better Storyteller. I hope you’ll join us.

I hope you’ll check it out. Visit akimbo.com go for all the upcoming. NG workshops. Go make a Ruckus. Chess is a game. It’s an almost perfect little game.

There are 64 squares, there are 32 pieces, the rules can fit onto sheets of paper. The rules are the rules. You play the game? You can lose the game or you can win the game and some people don’t want to play, just because the game is a little trivial, it’s trivial in the sense that it is a Pastime. It is something that is not going to affect the outside world and it’s something that a lot of people aren’t very good at, and it doesn’t make them feel good to Game. They’re not good at little games that are optimized for big markets. Things like Battleship or cheat or Monopoly, offend people who love little games because they are obviously manipulative.

The rules aren’t Pure or clean and the person who developed the game is trying very hard to create moments of tension where sometimes it’s not as fun as it could be, but I don’t want to talk. So much about little games as I want to talk about big games when we start talking about other things in our life, as games, people who don’t understand the Dynamics of a game or don’t like games sometimes fade away.

So, when I talk about game theory, for example, people think it’s a discussion about how to win at Checkers. It’s not Game Theory, helps us understand that. A game involves inputs decisions and resources. There are multiple players and when the inputs change new decisions are required. Those decisions are actually decisions because there isn’t an infinite number of resources. You don’t have unlimited time and unlimited power to do everything. So you have to choose and these choices have repercussions and it leads to outputs and understanding the abstraction that we get, when we look at things in the world. Old as a game helps us understand how the world works and how to make it better.

So, what am I talking about? Let’s think for a minute about Twitter, Twitter is a game. The rules of the game are pretty simple. Until recently a hundred and forty characters that’s all you get, there is a format, there’s a structure you’re allowed to post as many times as you want per day, and these are the basic rules, then a Twitter user invented, a new rule, all the hashtag. So the rules can change just a little bit, but why did Twitter work? Well first, let’s start with why Twitter didn’t work for years. After its founding Twitter wasn’t much of a success at all, and it was only when they went to South by Southwest and put up, monitors in the hallways that they got a certain section of the cool kids to start using Twitter to do what to play a game.

It’s a game about status and affiliation. It’s a game in which you take output. That are coming from outside the board. Game outputs about what happened in this conference or what’s happening in politics or pop culture. And you turn them around in some way to use your limited resources to get your message into the twittersphere to see if you’re going to win this round.

And there are lots of ways to keep score. Some people keep score by counting how many followers they have. How many likes they got? How many comments they got. Some people keep score by seeing how deeply they could troll other people and make them unhappy. P. Some people keep track of whether they could get a hashtag to Trend or not. There are lots of ways to keep score in this game of Twitter and to the Delight of people who own early shares of Twitter.

The game keeps getting refreshed. It gets refreshed because new players show up new inputs from outside the world show up, people devote themselves to playing. Not realizing they’re not the customers of Twitter. They’re the product. That passion, that disappointment, that fear, that angst, that disillusion, that people feel when they’re using Twitter.

That is a byproduct to get you to come back and use Twitter, some more. So you can see more ads, Twitter is a game and we can now go to a new level of abstraction, which is some people are showing up inventing games that are played on somebody else’s board. If we look at some of the nuanced discussion that went on About Q & A on.

It turns out Q8 can be seen as a game. It is a role-playing game that is controlled by a semi-anonymous Gamemaster and play done. Lots and lots of boards. It manipulated Facebook’s algorithms to grow it. Thrives on platforms like YouTube and Twitter. So it’s on somebody else’s board but again, their inputs, there’s decisions and there are resources that play.

The people who were playing and when we look at these games that are now being pushed onto our culture, what we have to acknowledge is that these games while they might benefit, the Gamemaster have significant side effects. And so I want to talk for a second about the biggest game of all, the biggest meta game, and that meta game is the game of individuals seeking to make money by playing with.

Open markets and capitalism the that game Dynamic did not exist 800 years ago and was pretty scarce, 200 years ago and there are lots of ways that our culture could have evolved. But the game dynamics of I’m going to call it capitalism here even though it’s not pure capitalism. The game dynamics of capitalism that ratchet, that people who start winning the game. Start to play the game harder that the game.

Public school and organized schooling. As we know it that the game is deeply embedded into every element of our culture that the game invented this thing, that some of us call marketing that the game turns out to be something that politicians have no choice but to play and around and around it goes, if you want to change the culture, it really helps to play a game so that people Who are trying to play the game of capitalism, will go along with the change. We seek to make.

So you want to get rid of carbon and save the planet. Well, one way you do, it is with cap and trade so that people can make a profit limiting. Carbon one way you can do it is by investing in technology that drives down the price of Solar because we have seen in the last few years as solar has gotten cheaper.

Nobody is building coal power plants and lat People are building solar and wind power plant. Some of them are doing it because they like their grandchildren to survive, but many of them are doing it because it’s a great strategy in the game because you come out ahead turning that ratchet around and around and like, chess the rules. The basic fundamental rules behind capitalism are super simple.

Find something someone wants to buy that you can sell for more than it cost you to make it repeat. Pete and then add to it, the Master Level game, which is invest in people who are playing that game. And now, one higher level of abstraction.

If someone came in a time machine from a thousand years ago and watched a day trader trading Bitcoin sitting in their living room, they would be completely mystified if you explained to this person, this person who used to work, digging ditches, this person who used to work farming. Growing food that this person sitting in this room is richer, then, any person who was alive on Earth, 800 years ago, they wouldn’t have a clue what this person is doing because sitting in your living room day, trading. Bitcoin is a game, it is a game in which inputs come decisions are made. And then there are outputs and looking at all of the things around us and understanding the game Dynamic behind it makes a A big difference in understanding culture and getting your ideas to spread Jim cars and then Simon sinek both wrote books about infinite versus finite games. I recommend both of them.

A finite game is a game with a super simple set of rules like chess. There are multiple players. There’s often a time limit but there is definitely a winner. At the end, some finite games, are zero-sum games, which means that every time you win a little somebody Is a little every time you win a lot. Somebody loses a lot.

Other finite, games, aren’t zero-sum games. There are things that someone can do that. Pay benefits for lots of people without hurting anybody else, a musician, standing on a street corner, busking is playing music for the people who are paying for it, but they’re not taking anything away from the people who aren’t paying for it, the world gets better when we play games that aren’t zero-sum.

But What cars and cynic also pointed out is that there’s another kind of game, which isn’t infinite game, which you aren’t playing to win. You’re simply playing to play, as I’ve said before, you don’t play, catch with your three-year-old to win. You play catch, so you can play catch and so you can play catch again.

Because if you win catch with the three-year-old, you never get to play catch with that person or just about anybody ever again. Now the goal is to play to keep playing. So capitalism is a tricky game because there are elements of That are zero-sum that if there’s only a certain amount of money in a certain part of the economy and you take more of it, someone gets less of it.

But there are other elements of capitalism that have enriched, the entire planet, because it turns out that giving other people access to tools might make you money, but the tools help those people we’ve together possibility. Perhaps for the next person. So, what we’ve got to do is we danced on a precipice? A precipice of carbon, a precipice of democracy, a precipice of civil discourse, a precipice of Public Health.

All of them are dancing right around the edge of, is this a finite game or an infinite game? Are we playing a little game or are we playing a big game? How do we encourage people to play this game in a way that doesn’t require them to rewire how they think about games and status and affiliation? But allows them to eagerly.

A game that we’re all glad is being played and that is when the time component kicks in, because in the short run, people make decisions about what is good for them right now. It is good for someone right now. To one click shop because it’s convenient, it’s cheaper, it’s faster and now we can go back to what we were doing in the long run. It’s entirely possible, we will miss downtown, we will miss The thriving community near where we live. We will miss the Civil discourse that comes from small and perhaps not so small businesses having retail outlets nearby paying taxes for them up. Keep Etc.

But in the short run, our incentive playing this little slash big game is to win the round, not to play the infinite game and that’s why when we think about this abstraction, Of what game are we playing? What we realize is that almost every single game that thrives that leaves, the players better off has referees.

It has the commissioner, it has a structure even open market or you could call it free market capitalism. Still has referees. It still has a significant amount of oversight because if it didn’t, then you would end up with insider trading. The dark web and people scamming every single day. So in our rush to play the little game or the big game, it’s easy to be confused about the fact that we’re playing by the rules and we’d like everyone else too.

But we also need somebody to enforce the rules and so in our rush to play more games, we have to be on high alert to discover. Whether there is a game master somewhere who is pushing us to play a game. That benefits them. Maybe we score some points in the short run. But are we signing up for dead ends? For cul-de-sacs, for traps for games, that feel seductive in the short run, but ultimately will cause pain, and suffering in the long run, we need to understand what’s in it for the game master. What’s in it for Parker, Brothers?

What’s in it for Twitter? Who are the customers? What is the product? What is the transaction like? Because on top of the little Your game is the big game. And on top of the big game is the only game and that game the metagame. The game, at the highest level of abstraction is pretty simple. We all get to play it. Exactly one time, we all have a chance to leave things. Better than we found them. We all can choose to ignore, zero-sum games and play games, that are additive that are infinite, that are constructive, but we can’t do that if we don’t see the game in the first. Place.

Thanks for listening, your move will be back in a second with a question from last time. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit akimbo.com. Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops and how it all works. Thanks, it’s Maria. Hey, Seth, my name is Kyle reading. Seth, this is Steven out in Madison Wisconsin. Hi, Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new power Katelyn. I say warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey Sun. Hi. This is Russell is from Greece. Hi this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question as you know I love to hear from you but I can’t answer your questions if you don’t ask them. So please visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link2006, click the appropriate button, a really good question. I’m from Michael.

Hi Seth. It’s Michael from Sydney, Australia and I have just finished listening to your podcast on what an office is for. And I’m curious about your thoughts about the office is a place for incidental learning and insight as an architect. I know that this is something in particular that the profession has struggled with over this time of covid and remote work, where there are opportunities to discover something in the office such as as watching someone draw on a computer on tracing paper and giving them some immediate feedback or insight into how they might be able to resolve. The problem we’re trying to solve in that particular project or even being able to pull a book off the shelf and show the team. How someone else might have resolved, something similar in a project or to explain something to them.

They’re all those opportunities. You might have as you will pass someone’s computer and you see them do something with a piece of software where in Flying functionality that you may not have been there. Those serendipitous occasions, that that happened in the office that give you opportunity to learn or bring insight.

And I’m really curious about how you think about this when it comes to what an office is for. Really looking forward to your insights and really grateful for all of the work that you do. Thank Seth. Thanks for teeing up. This ramp Michael. I appreciate it. Try to imagine the following for 30 years so it’s 2050 we’ve been working from home. We’ve been using Zoom we’ve been sharing documents editing them together finding discussion boards.

Interacting with other people regardless of where they are in time and space to get our work done. And then someone shows up and says wait, wait wait, I got this great idea. Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to Been two and a half hours a day on additional grooming, commuting parking schlepping and then we’re all going to go to this building this really expensive building. And while we’re there, one of two things is going to happen. Either, if you’ve got status, you’re going to get a room, all, to yourself with a door that shuts and maybe sometimes, just maybe someone in physical proximity to you will bump into you on your way to the coffee machine and have an impromptu yet important conversation or Or we’re going to put you in a cube Farm, maybe there aren’t even walls around your Cube jammed up against other people because a, it’s cheaper for us and be people will be able to look over your shoulder, not in an organized structured way. But just sort of randomly overhearing Snippets of what you say on the phone or watching what you’re typing on the screen.

And all of these connections will make it better and pay for your additional dry cleaning costs as well. I think if we said that people would think We’re nuts because it’s absurd. It’s absurd because it leaves out enrollment and intentionality. It’s absurd because it puts physical proximity. Ahead of project, Focus that we built the office because we had no other choices that in an industrial setting.

We need everybody to be right next to the assembly line, but as more and more people are working with ideas instead of stuff. And we have the ability to transform time and space by using the internet, all of a sudden, most of the benefits of everyone going to the office. At the same time, go down, really fast.

So what I’m pushing for here is intentionality and enrollment. If people want to work together, they can create enormous. Things of value, Wikipedia is built by five thousand, 50 thousand and five million people. Who have never met him person but they show their work. Their work can be shared and improved and edited and boom, it’s better one hour later. Four hours later, it’s transformed turns out. If you’ve got a medical problem in a lot of resources, the best thing is for six, specialists around the world. To look at, all your tests, your Diagnostics, your X-rays.

And yes, do telemedicine with you. You will get far. More insight. Then if you traipse from one person to another over the course of weeks that went information is at stake. We come out ahead when people intentionally share it in a structured way that a shared Google doc is so much more efficient in terms of exposing what we want to talk about. Then sitting around a conference room and trying to read the Signs & murmurs the highwomen Hierarchy of status the loud, people getting listen to more than the non-allowed, people the people with traditional privilege, getting a louder, say than the ones who don’t have it, we are rewiring the whole system.

If I was going to hire an architect, I want a firm of five committed professionals who are leaning into it, who are working together in a shared digital format, boom, back and forth. Boomed on improved, listen to then I Go to a fancy office where I am distracted by stuff. That might make sense in a given moment but isn’t done with intention.

So yeah that’s a rant and maybe I’m looking for a silver lining where there isn’t one, but I got to say, we’ve done a pretty good job of suddenly and dramatically switching in the middle of trauma and disarray to working remotely. But now now it’s on us to rebuild that into something Saying that’s delightful and energizing and effective.

Thanks for listening to my rant. We’ll see you next time. I just don’t think it’s possible or probable. And in today’s world, to distinguish yourself as an educational institution or as a success, Seeker at the level of of information gathering or information distribution. I mean, this is the information age, and you can get a great book, a great essay, a great idea, anywhere, you know, and none of us can do that better than the internet, right?

There is no great thought leader, who can outthink the internet. Like we have data what all-nba gets right? Is it puts you in a context where you’re part of a community that says? Yeah. Yeah, that’s good. You got access to ideas. You got access to information, that’s awesome. But when you going to show up, when you going to face that blank page, when you going to face the possibilities within you, when are you going to face those fears?

I’m not gonna let you hide. You gotta show up. And that’s the hardest part and it sounds simple. It sounds very commonsensical but it’s the number one reason why we don’t write that book. It’s the number one reason why we don’t ask that question. It’s not because we don’t know, or we don’t have the information, we don’t have an environment and we don’t have a support network. That makes it feel like showing up as possible for me not just possible for the success stories. I see out there, but I can show up.

Consider the alt MBA. More than 3,000 alumni in 74. Countries around the world. Find out more at alt mba.com.

==> -the-miser- <==

All right with fingers on buzzers.

Let’s see, who can first identify this scientist.

He built some early, vacuum, tubes, enabling Robert Boyle to do his groundbreaking work. He was one of the first people to describe the rotations of the planets, Mars and Jupiter. He came up with some of the basic hypotheses of gravity in Optics. He did groundbreaking work in light, refraction he had Important things to say about the development of calculus and he was one of the first people to argue that fossils were actually remnant of creatures that lived a long time ago and wrote controversial papers about how old the Earth actually is if you guest Robert Hooke with an e at the end you’re better at the history of science then I am hey, it’s Seth and this is akimbo.

We’ll be back in a second to talk about being a miser. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor make things better. That’s the goal make things better by making better things, that’s marketing marketing works. It works because we show up in the world with something that makes a change for the better and we’ve discovered the single best way to learn marketing. It’s called the marketing seminar, an interactive ongoing discussion. Based Project based Workshop. That actually works.

Its back its back again. At akimbo.com., Go find all the details. If you are serious, about changing the culture, if you are serious about showing up in a way that grows your project, your business, your cause I hope you’ll check out the marketing seminar. It’s at a Kimbo.com go its back it works because you do. You will see you there.

Not only did Robert Hooke come up with all that stuff. Granted. He did it in a century where scientists were going crazy because there was so much stuff to come up with but he was also friends with Christopher Wren. And more importantly, the first head of the Royal Society where all of the great scientists in London regularly got together with each other, to figure out how the natural world actually worked. He held that post for years and years and expanded it.

To become the person in charge of their experiments, as well as a result. Robert Hooke was in the middle of all of this and then something happened and what happened is, Isaac Newton submitted a paper to the Royal Society. And in that paper, in which he argued, that light was a particle. He disagreed with Robert Hooke.

No Blows were exchanged but they weren’t happy with each other and in Newton’s breakthrough principia, Mathematica. He gives hook almost no credit for the inverse Square law or for any of the other work that hook did on developing our understanding of gravity. As a result of these interactions. The two of them never got along again.

And after hooks, death Newton took over the Royal Society and engaged in a Lifelong campaign with some petty elements to it to eliminate hooks influence on science, including destroying, the only known portrait of Robert Hooke. If you read, most of the biographies that have been written in the last 50 years about Robert Hooke.

Well, let me quote. He was Melancholy mistrustful and jealous. He had an uneasy apprehensive vanity. He was cantankerous, envious vengeful. He had a caustic tongue. His attitude was difficult suspicious and irritable. Well, if someone wants to write about me like that in their biography of me, I’d rather they didn’t write the biography at all. It turns out in new revisionist biographies of hook that some of this was overstated, but how did it happen in the first place?

Well, let’s think for a minute about what happened toward the end of Robert hooke’s life. He never married never had kids, but he did regularly sleep with his He’s and often told people that he was going to bequeath all of his riches to the Royal Society, enabling it to remain thriving in independent for years to come.

But when he died, they found eight thousand pounds of money and gold in his room and no will, which meant that all of the money went to a distant cousin. Instead, Robert Hooke was a miser, Robert Hooke. Who had been burned by Newton decided to stop sharing instead of publishing his work with Clarity instead? All he did was post ciphers and anagrams, short sentences, that he thought he could use to prove years later that he had thought of an idea before anybody else. He regularly stole or sort of took credit for the ideas that came to him in his position as the head of the Royal Society.

He didn’t go out of his way. A to enable the people around him to do better science. And most importantly, he didn’t show his work because when you show your work when you’re doing science, someone could find an error, someone could steal your idea. But most important someone could build on your idea and Robert Hooke was so worried about getting credit about winning about defeating Newton about proving that he was the better. Better scientist that he forgot to actually do science.

And the lesson for me, when we think about the sad life of a miser who ends up alone in his room with his trunk full of money and his reputation gone. It’s this we have the chance to show our work. It is tempting to bring a scarcity mindset to a culture of ideas. But in fact, if you share an idea, you still have it.

And so does the person you gave it to? It is not the same as a Bitcoin either you have a Bitcoin or you don’t ideas that spread win. If someone can build on your idea of someone can adjust an idea to turn it from, not very good to better. Then both of you come out ahead and Robert Hooke who had just about everything a scientist in London could have three centuries ago.

Blew it. All. He blew it all cuz he decided he didn’t have enough. And instead of bringing an abundance mindset, the opportunity to share the work to other Minds to other people who would be able to amplify he hoarded it. And the problem with being a miser. Is that while you might end up with a bunch of money when you’re dead, you don’t need a bunch of money when you’re dead.

What we need is the chance to make things better and we do that by real. Leslie, giving away our best work over and over again, feeding the culture feeding the system, because then we get to live in a world that’s filled with good ideas. So that’s a short rant about what we should do with our privilege and our Insight.

Thanks for listening.

We’ll be back in a second with answers to questions from last time. But first, here’s a message from our sponsor.

When is it time to level up? Up. What is it? Time to learn a new way, to see the world to connect with others, to lead to engage in possibility. Akimbo is a b Corp, an independently owned and operated institution designed around, learning, not education, not certificates, not grades, but learning together.

It works. If you do the work, I hope you’ll check out what the people at a Kimbo are up to visit. Akimbo.com. Go to find out about their new upcoming workshops. And how it all works. Thanks.

It’s Maria. My name is Kyle reading. Seth. This is Steven out in Madison, Wisconsin. Hi Seth, Alicia from Charleston here. – this is our new pump. This is Caitlin cursor, warm, greetings from Curacao. Hey Seth, my name is Nick Ryan from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Hey Sam, this is Rex. Hey Sun. Hi, this is Russell is from Greece. Hi, this is Roberta Perry. My question is and that completes my question.

As you know, I love to hear from you. If you got a question about this or any other episode, I hope you’ll visit akimbo dot link. That’s a Ki M, Bo dot link-16 lick the appropriate button, whatever season you are living with right now. In whichever hemisphere. I hope you’ll take a minute to ask your question.

I said, this is Jim Dowling coming to you from beautiful Lake. Charlotte. Nova Scotia. Your work is at a huge impact on me to Have been Monumental the smallest viable and what’s it for working. As a psychotherapist? I often wonder to myself. What’s our life for?

What are we doing here for?

And why does the smallest viable thing I can do from one moment to the next?

I’m curious about your thoughts when it comes to your life or life in general. What’s it for? Maybe that’s too big an esoteric not practical enough. But that’s likely why. I’m sitting here staring at a beautiful glassy Lake. Thank you so much for everything.

You do. Thanks for this gym. I’ve listened to this question at least 10 times so far. You can hear the birds. You can hear the quiet from the lake. I’ve looked up pictures of clam Bay Road in Nova Scotia. What a beautiful glacial Lake you’re on. Thank you for your intonation and the care and the work that you do.

Here’s my take on. What’s it for? For something to be for something. It means that it was created as an intervention that you are bringing something to the world to make a change hap

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