The Remarkable Leadership Podcast

00:00:08:07 - 00:00:36:09
Kevin Eikenberry
Strategy is important. Everyone would agree, but not everyone feels confident in creating it or has great experiences with it. Today we're talking about why that is and how we can fix it. And you're going to love this conversation. Welcome to another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast, where we are helping leaders grow personally and professionally to lead more effectively and make a bigger, positive difference for their teams, organizations and the world.

00:00:36:14 - 00:00:55:10
Kevin Eikenberry
If you are listening to this podcast, you could be with us in the future. Live! Therefore, getting this information sooner. Taking advantage of it to your advantage sooner. You want to learn how to do that. You can join our Facebook or LinkedIn groups where you can get all of the scoop, as well as times when events will be taking place.

00:00:55:12 - 00:01:19:04
Kevin Eikenberry
Just go to Remarkable podcast at dot com slash LinkedIn or remarkable podcast.com/facebook. Take your pick. Doesn't matter to me. Today's episode is brought to you by the second edition of The Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote and Hybrid Leadership. If you lead a team that is distributed in any way, this book will give you new skills, insights, and the confidence to lead more effectively in a new world of work.

00:01:19:06 - 00:01:43:04
Kevin Eikenberry
You can learn more. Order your copy and make Kevin happy by going to remarkable podcast.com. Smell the L. Our guest today, coming back for the second time several years apart, is Seth Godin. I'm going to bring Seth in and here's what you will find. We have in common. We both have glasses that have colorful frames. Seth is an author, entrepreneur, and most of all a teacher.

00:01:43:06 - 00:02:06:20
Kevin Eikenberry
In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 21 bestselling books at last count The Dip, linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes What to Do When It's Your Turn, and It's Always Your Turn, and his newest book, This Is Strategy Make Better Plans. Though renowned for his writing and speaking, Seth also founded two companies, Skidoo and Yoyo Dine, which was acquired by Yahoo!

00:02:06:22 - 00:02:23:15
Kevin Eikenberry
By focusing on everything from effective marketing and leadership to the spread of ideas and changing everything, Seth has been able to motivate and inspire, counseled countless people around the world, and he joins us. Rejoins us today at the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. Seth, welcome back. So glad that you're here.

00:02:23:16 - 00:02:30:15
Seth Godin
Great to see you, Kevin. I think you just came up with a great idea for t shirt make Kevin happy. Yeah. So I'm not.

00:02:30:15 - 00:02:49:05
Kevin Eikenberry
Sure how many we would sell. But that's okay. That's all right. And I've never said that. And I was thinking I should probably say this is my book, but I didn't. So there we go. But we're not talking about my. But we're here to talk about Seth's book. This is strategy. So when you've written as many things, done as many things as you've done, I'm curious.

00:02:49:05 - 00:02:58:23
Kevin Eikenberry
I want to start here. What's the journey to or maybe another way of saying why this particular book?

00:02:59:00 - 00:03:27:11
Seth Godin
The craft of making and publishing a book has changed dramatically in the last 30 or 40 years. And, a book is still a really worthwhile journey to go on. It organizes your thoughts, it helps establish who you are. But it's harder than ever. So I only make a book if I have no choice, that I can reach ten times as many people as a blog posted with a book and a book, a bipartisan take a year of my life.

00:03:27:13 - 00:03:54:06
Seth Godin
This book needed to be written because people I care about have choices, and they're not acknowledging the choices, nor are they making the choices they can make. What should we do now, and what should we do next are at the heart of a sort of leadership. But if you're just showing up to do your job, then you're managing, not leading, and you're not confronting a future that's changing very dramatically.

00:03:54:06 - 00:04:12:13
Seth Godin
So what I found in my conversations with people I care about because I don't do any consulting is I kept talking about the fact they didn't have a marketing problem, they had a strategy problem, and the next thing I knew, there were 100 pages and it wouldn't let me go. So here I am.

00:04:12:15 - 00:04:34:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, I'm glad that you came at it that way. Because, you know, you said the world of book publishing and, and, and book promotion and all those things have changed dramatically, which they have. You played a role in that in some ways. And yet and so I will tell you that while I was excited to read this book and excited to have you on here, the way the book is written is different, which makes it harder to prepare for.

00:04:34:23 - 00:04:56:08
Kevin Eikenberry
I mean, I read the book, but it makes it harder to prepare in some ways. So I just want you to tell people like, so the book is not written in chapter form unless you want to call those blog short blog post length. Chapters. Why arrange the book the way you did? And what's the what's the value we can take from that?

00:04:56:08 - 00:04:59:13
Kevin Eikenberry
So I'll just show people a page while you do that.

00:04:59:15 - 00:05:23:08
Seth Godin
So there are no page numbers? I've been a teacher. I know I've been a teacher since I was 17. Pedagogy matters to me. I know how to teach people. Here's what I have found. Nobody learns anything when the teacher teaches them from A to Z. You didn't learn all the vegetables in one day. You didn't learn all the players in the in the major leagues in one day.

00:05:23:10 - 00:05:47:00
Seth Godin
We learned in layers, layer after layer after layer. So while there are certain topics where a taxonomy and a layout of of where you're headed make perfect sense. So you have to know this before you know that most things don't work that way. And I can't talk about systems unless I talk about games. I can't talk about games, and I talk about empathy.

00:05:47:00 - 00:05:56:03
Seth Godin
I can't talk about empathy unless I talk about time. So I keep going back and forth between them. And I got advice. I said, no, no, no, you need to force this into a structure.

00:05:56:05 - 00:05:59:11
Kevin Eikenberry
I'm sure you did. And I'm like, you know.

00:05:59:13 - 00:06:19:02
Seth Godin
That's not how I learned. I don't think that's how most people are. So I wrote it like I was sitting with you teaching Kevin my point of view on something. And the reason there are no page numbers is because more than half my sales are digital, either audio or Kindle, and there are no page numbers there. So the page numbers weren't serving any purpose.

00:06:19:02 - 00:06:25:14
Seth Godin
I want someone to say, let's talk about number 147, not let's each find a page that we don't have a page number.

00:06:25:14 - 00:06:41:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Four I love that. So, let's let's do this. You you've hinted at this already, actually, but since the book is called This is Strategy. Probably the most obvious question I could ask you is, so what is strategy?

00:06:41:03 - 00:07:08:17
Seth Godin
Great question. It's not tactics. It's not a plan. Managers like tactics and plans because the promise is if you do all the steps, you will succeed. Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. Strategy says there is a future in store. I don't know exactly what it is, but I can see it from a distance. I have people I want to change, a change I want to make, assertions I can make about how that will happen.

00:07:08:19 - 00:07:37:12
Seth Godin
If I can agree with my team about that, we can find lots of tactics to help us get there. But it's not a plan. It just makes us help us make a better plan. So to give you an example, I was, at Yahoo in 1999 when they had the chance to buy Google for $10 million, not 10 billion, not 10 trillion, $10 million.

00:07:37:13 - 00:08:00:06
Seth Godin
And they didn't do it. And instead they invested the money to make Yahoo kids better. And this, in hindsight, is a really stupid mistake. But. And I wasn't in the room, so you can't blame me. But at one level it's defensible because Yahoo strategy was the internet is a dark and dank place with a lot of dead ends.

00:08:00:06 - 00:08:26:07
Seth Godin
So we're going to build a website where when people come there, they stay there. So there were 183 links on the homepage, and most of them went to other places at Yahoo. Google came along a generation later and said the system has changed the internet. The open internet is filled with vibrant opportunity. We're going to build a site and we're going to measure in at 100th of a second how long you stay here and show you how long.

00:08:26:08 - 00:08:53:21
Seth Godin
We built a site whose only purpose is to get you to go somewhere else. And so Yahoo strategy was totally different than Google's. And if they had bought Google, they would have killed it, because what Google did, the giant insight they had wasn't the backrub algorithm. The giant insight was a different strategy because the world it changed. And the same thing happened when Western Union had the chance to buy AT&T for almost nothing.

00:08:53:23 - 00:09:15:16
Seth Godin
They didn't do it and instead decided to make a better telegram. And again, they had a different strategy. And when the world changes, your strategy needs to change too. So here we are with two of the biggest changes in our lifetime climate. And I, and almost every organization is ignoring both of them and just going back to work to do what they did yesterday.

00:09:15:18 - 00:09:33:18
Kevin Eikenberry
So I'm glad that you mentioned I and I talked to you about this briefly before we went live here, that in like, I can't call it page one, but like page minus two. One of the things that you say where you also have this, the hippo, but my I.

00:09:33:18 - 00:09:34:16
Seth Godin
Know Kevin.

00:09:34:21 - 00:09:54:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Rhino. Sorry. The rhino. You say that one of the things that you encourage people to do with the book is to use an AI tool called is the one that you suggest to help them augment and use the ideas in the book. Let's just go there because, again, a lot of authors would say like, stay, keep on reading my book.

00:09:54:23 - 00:10:12:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Don't go anywhere. I'll stay right here. I have I am the fount of knowledge. So like, first of all, why that decision? And second of all, how how can we do that? Or use cloud or an AI tool to help us, inform us and make the book better for us?

00:10:12:03 - 00:10:37:17
Seth Godin
Oh, I'm sure I'm not the fount of knowledge. I have questions. The book has more than 500 questions in it. I think my questions are pretty good. Where you go after I ask you a question. That's up to you. I want you to ask each other the questions. It's awkward to ask other human beings the question. As we're recording this live tomorrow, we're doing a worldwide meetup in, more than 150 cities around the world.

00:10:37:19 - 00:11:02:19
Seth Godin
Thousands of people coming together face to face to ask each other question. So here's a shortcut. Take your plan five page plan, 100 page plan. Whatever plan you're working with, upload it to cloud and then ask cloud some questions about your plan in the privacy of your own home. No one will know you did this. Hey, Claude, Seth says, how does my plan hold up to that?

00:11:02:21 - 00:11:14:21
Seth Godin
And it will give you kind, incisive, custom feedback about your plan, advice you used to have to pay $1 million for. And you can get it instantly and for 20 bucks. So.

00:11:14:22 - 00:11:17:22
Kevin Eikenberry
And without exposing yourself to anybody else.

00:11:17:22 - 00:11:40:15
Seth Godin
Exactly. And so if you're not doing that, you're committing malpractice. Because the fact is AI doesn't know anything, but it does know the math of words and it will be able to connect what I said with what you said and highlight something for you that you have been ignoring that basically will say, you know, on page three, you're asserting that a miracle will occur.

00:11:40:17 - 00:12:01:05
Seth Godin
You're asserting that you're a little jazz quartet was going to be discovered by, by John Hammond and be put on Columbia Records. Unfortunately, Hammond is dead and no one buys jazz records anymore. So you should think about that part of your plan. Your friends don't have the guts to tell you that, but you need to hear it.

00:12:01:07 - 00:12:28:04
Kevin Eikenberry
I really I love that a lot. And so the the opportunities and approaches that we can take to use these new tools are far beyond what most people are doing. And and although for a year and a half people have been saying, you got to get on this now, you gotta you do this now, that's still true. And most people that got on board aren't doing any more than the people that are starting today.

00:12:28:06 - 00:12:30:01
Kevin Eikenberry
That that's my observation.

00:12:30:03 - 00:12:55:13
Seth Godin
Yeah. I mean, here's what what happens when you introduce somebody to the internet for the first time 20 years ago? The first thing they do is they look for a porn site. And the second thing they do is they Google themselves. And we haven't become much more sophisticated than that. People show up at Claude or ChatGPT and they ask a few inane questions, and then they're amused and they move on.

00:12:55:15 - 00:13:29:04
Seth Godin
But the people who are great at it are understanding that prompt engineering is real, and that the idea that there is this entity that has read everything but knows nothing but can, with structured conversation, help you like, here's something you can do today that's really useful. Think of a list of four things in, you know, four ways our industry could be disrupted three ways to fire somebody without, getting sued.

00:13:29:04 - 00:13:50:06
Seth Godin
Whatever it is, right? Make a list. Post your list to Claude and say, can you add five more things to this list? Please? And I promise you, whatever the list is, even flavors of ice cream. You of the five things, two of them will surprise you and will make you think harder. And that's not a parlor trick. That is a breakthrough.

00:13:50:12 - 00:14:13:05
Seth Godin
This is, I think, the biggest change in our culture since electricity. Not because of this first step, but because the step after that, when it starts connecting us to other people and other ideas in a way that we haven't had awareness of before. And connection is the fuel for our culture today.

00:14:13:07 - 00:14:32:06
Kevin Eikenberry
Which ties into one of the things you talk about in the book a good bit, and it connects. It connects to it connects to systems, it connects to time. It is the network effect. So when we think about the network effect, it applies in all sorts of ways. We typically think about it in relationship to our network.

00:14:32:08 - 00:14:46:16
Kevin Eikenberry
You know who you know that I know and who you know that I don't know it. All that stuff can connect that idea of the network effect to the AI tools. I mean, you were right. You were right there. So take that a step further.

00:14:46:18 - 00:15:11:12
Seth Godin
Okay? So let me for folks who are just listening now, the network effect is a very specific thing and has nothing to do with your network. It has to do with does this work better if other people use it to. So let's think of some examples of that. You can't use a fax machine by yourself. If you do, you get a busy signal.

00:15:11:14 - 00:15:31:06
Seth Godin
So you've you bought a fax machine. You have a selfish reason to get other people to get a fax machine. That's why the fax machine grew. Facebook said after it had only 100 people on it at Harvard University. It said to the next hundred people, hey, people are talking about you behind your back. Do you want to hear what they're saying?

00:15:31:08 - 00:16:01:11
Seth Godin
Because it works better for everyone using it. If more people are using it, this is what the network effect is, and this is something that has transformed the world. And the reason that the giant corporations of today have never run any ads is because the advertising is built in to their structure, which is the network effect. The future is going to belong to leaders who build the network effect into what they do.

00:16:01:13 - 00:16:28:06
Seth Godin
So a really trivial example, because if you're not a giant corporation, a really trivial example, a guy who opens an Italian restaurant in New York City on, 92nd and Broadway. Now, the thing about New York City is there's more than one Italian restaurant. And how are you going to build a place that's huge, expensive, and filled every day for the next 30 years?

00:16:28:08 - 00:16:54:22
Seth Godin
So here's what they did at Carmine's. Number one, every dish has three times as much food as you can eat. Number two, every dish has six times as much garlic as is appropriate. And number three, you can't get a reservation unless your party has six or more people in it. So what happens is a few people go to the first day, and the next day they go to work and people smell what's on their breath and they say, what?

00:16:55:02 - 00:17:10:10
Seth Godin
What's going on? And they tell the story of the ridiculous portions and fun time they had at Carmine's. And then someone says, why don't we go and say, well, I can't go unless we get six people because you can't get a table if you don't have six people. So now you get other people to come. The restaurant is more fun for a crowd.

00:17:10:12 - 00:17:34:14
Seth Godin
You can't get in unless you have a crowd. And it's been going out for, I don't know, 40 years. So that is the simplest hand a hand example of the network effect. Let's contrast that with the fact that more of us work from home, more of us work remotely, more of us are building entities like I have zero employees and entities that use tools to get skill.

00:17:34:17 - 00:17:46:16
Seth Godin
So when we combine those two things, we have to realize we don't need people to manage. We need people to serve, and we will serve them by connecting them.

00:17:46:18 - 00:18:20:15
Kevin Eikenberry
So one of the things you really talk and you mentioned these four things earlier, I mean, you opened the close, as I would say to you, opening the book or with these four ideas, right, right, time games, empathy and systems. And we don't have time to unpack all of them by any stretch. But I'd like you to talk a little bit about systems in the context of, understanding the system that we're in and how that relates to the choices and therefore the strategies that we create.

00:18:20:17 - 00:18:46:13
Seth Godin
Systems are all around us, and they're largely invisible. We build our life around them without understanding. So your hiring and resume comes in from Harvard, and you put that person to the top of the pile. Why exactly what's the data for that? Well, the educational industrial complex and 400 years of carefully constructed history created the cultural conditions. Right?

00:18:46:16 - 00:19:00:16
Seth Godin
You get in a car in a town you've never been to, you get out of the airport and you start driving on the right side of the road without thinking about it, because the system in this country is you drive. But if you fly to Narita and you do that, you're going to die in a crash because they drive on the other side of the road.

00:19:00:22 - 00:19:24:20
Seth Godin
So the systems that are all around us, you know, the the health care system in the United States does not make health. It makes treatments. So if you walk into that system hoping to get health, you're going to be disappointed, because that's not what they offer. They offer treatments. And so we go down this long list of what are things like around here.

00:19:24:22 - 00:19:50:02
Seth Godin
If you have a bicycle, my guess is it's not a recumbent bicycle, because in 1922, Charles Moishe, who invented the recumbent bicycle, launched it in a way that didn't work, and he ended up getting it banned from bike racing. Well, the system around bicycles in the world is almost no one's a bike racer, but lots of people want to look like they are a bike racer because they get status from that.

00:19:50:08 - 00:20:05:01
Seth Godin
So even though recumbent bike is faster and safer and more comfortable, they don't sell very many. So that doesn't mean you shouldn't make a recumbent bike. It does mean that when you go into the market, you should be aware of what the systems you're dealing with are.

00:20:05:02 - 00:20:13:02
Kevin Eikenberry
And therefore your strategies need to be acknowledging and working with those same systems, right?

00:20:13:04 - 00:20:15:22
Seth Godin
Correct.

00:20:16:00 - 00:20:44:08
Kevin Eikenberry
I opened it I opened a little bit with this idea that, we have a mixed bag of thoughts and feelings about strategy. And I think one of the reasons is that it is the nature of the fact that strategy is trying to help us think about uncertainty. So you talk about the role of uncertainty in strategy.

00:20:44:10 - 00:21:05:10
Seth Godin
So in a science fiction universe where there is no time, where every day is the same as yesterday, we do not need a strategy because nothing is allowed to change. You're on the assembly line. You're taking the truffles out of the conveyor belt and putting them in the box over and over and over again. This was humanity for tens of thousands of years.

00:21:05:12 - 00:21:27:15
Seth Godin
The time machine, the idea of the time machine didn't get invented until H.G. Wells wrote about it. I find this astonishing. So in 1750, if you said to someone, if you could go back in time and change one thing, what would you change? They would not understand the question. This idea that time moves forward, right time, flies like an arrow.

00:21:27:15 - 00:21:52:10
Seth Godin
Fruit flies like a banana. This idea is strange and new, but the world does move forward. And tomorrow everyone listening to this will be allocated 24 new hours. It's evenly distributed every day, but we don't know exactly what it will lead to, because there are other people who are also trying to change the future. There are systems at work trying to keep the future from changing.

00:21:52:10 - 00:22:25:22
Seth Godin
There's technology, all of this. So if you want to innovate, you must. If you're serious about it, say this might not work. Because if you have to say this has to work, then you've decided innovation is not an option. So great strategies in turbulent times begin with we're about to try something uncertain, and that's okay, because if you can't say that, I guarantee you your competitor will beat you.

00:22:26:00 - 00:22:46:19
Kevin Eikenberry
And it's that last part and that's okay. That's that's hard for humans. Right? So that's I think part of the answer to this. But I'm curious from your perspective, why is it that you write about it? There's a there's I don't know, we don't call them chapters. There's a, there's a, there's a riff. I, there's a riff I like that, I'll call it a blog post.

00:22:46:19 - 00:23:02:16
Kevin Eikenberry
It's like the length of a blog post, about why we avoid strategy. I'm not asking you give me the whole list, but I but I do think I think that a lot of people that are watching or listening to us have a mixed bag of feelings about strategy, right? Some of them have been put it, have put it aside.

00:23:02:18 - 00:23:16:20
Kevin Eikenberry
They avoid it. They're cynical about it. So tell us let's talk about that a little bit. Because as leaders we need to understand we need to make sure we're clear on that. And we got to know that our folks are in many cases doing this. Right.

00:23:16:22 - 00:23:44:20
Seth Godin
Well, I mean, the title is important because what I'm saying is it's not called saith Strategy book. I'm redefining strategy correctly. Strategy is not what a strategy consultant tells you. Strategy is not strategic planning, which, Roger Martin points out is an oxymoron. You can't have strategic planning. Strategy is a philosophy of becoming. People don't want to talk about the fact that they're going to die one day.

00:23:44:22 - 00:24:12:00
Seth Godin
We don't like to talk about the distant future because it puts us on the hook. It makes us feel insecure. It reminds us that we're living, you know, there's a great Zen koan, which is we are falling, falling, falling. The good news is there's nothing to hold on to. And when we realize that we cannot command time to stop or to bend in our direction, things get much better.

00:24:12:00 - 00:24:34:15
Seth Godin
So, you know, back to Google. Google invented much of the lm AI stuff, and then they insisted, because they were so big and powerful that it would stop and they wouldn't going to weren't going to launch it. What they didn't understand is other people would. And right. And so you're not allowed to say, I see variations of the future.

00:24:34:15 - 00:24:41:13
Seth Godin
I don't want any of them because one of them is going to show up whether you want it or not. And so, yes.

00:24:41:13 - 00:24:42:20
Kevin Eikenberry
Even if you're Google.

00:24:43:02 - 00:24:44:04
Seth Godin
Right. And if you're Google, even.

00:24:44:04 - 00:24:44:15
Kevin Eikenberry
If you remove.

00:24:44:15 - 00:25:04:19
Seth Godin
It. And so my list of all the reasons not to want strategy include a lot of what we're just talking about. But I guess what I'm trying to say is this you have fire insurance, even though you don't want to fire, and you need to have a strategy, even if you're quite happy with the way the world is today.

00:25:04:21 - 00:25:25:21
Kevin Eikenberry
So leaders are listening to us now what, other than reading a copy of his book? What would you say leaders should be doing or thinking as they finish listening to this conversation?

00:25:25:23 - 00:26:04:14
Seth Godin
Well, my call to action is super simple, which we've hinted at already. You need to find somebody else. So, David, David is connected to somebody else and say, hey, we need to spend 20 minutes to talk about this. And if you set up a group that meets once a week on zoom for 20 minutes, within six weeks, your life will be transformed, because the whole week you're going to be thinking about what you're going to have to report back to the group, about the future, about choices, about systems and empathy and games and where you're headed and you haven't been talking about it.

00:26:04:14 - 00:26:20:22
Seth Godin
I'm confident of this. And if you talk about it, it will change. And that's my only ask. And I don't have a prescription other than you already know what to talk about. You're just not doing it.

00:26:21:00 - 00:26:52:18
Kevin Eikenberry
And, you know, I say all that all the time, that thoughts are fuzzy and words bring clarity whether we type them, write them or say them and and inside of what you're saying, that is the intention of that and the accountability that comes with that. By having that conversation every week. One of the things that I learned, I wrote a long time ago is someone asked me, about one of the books I wrote and they said, Kevin, what did you what did you learn after you wrote it?

00:26:52:20 - 00:27:12:13
Kevin Eikenberry
Like, we have this time period, right? And depending on how we do the book to how much time there is, but there's a time between when we say we're done and anyone else sees it in the world. What about this whole topic have you learned since you finished writing? So.

00:27:12:15 - 00:27:51:04
Seth Godin
The thing that makes me nervous, because I am a person who traffics and writes about things that are supposed to be obvious once you hear them, is that I was going to talk about things that people who do this all the time would say are too obvious, and I've had many, many podcast conversations in the last month, and I'm thrilled to tell you that in not one of them, did we talk about something where the person I was talking to was bored because it's not obvious until you hear it, and then it's obvious.

00:27:51:06 - 00:28:02:06
Seth Godin
And so I feel like I, I succeeded in naming something that people needed to be named and highlighting something that they wanted to share with their friends.

00:28:02:08 - 00:28:11:13
Kevin Eikenberry
We're talking with Seth Godin, the author of This is Strategy Make Better Plans. And just a couple more questions before we go. So what do you do for fun?

00:28:11:15 - 00:28:37:01
Seth Godin
Well, this is the funnest thing I do. That's why I do it. But in terms of what most people would consider fun, I paddle my canoe on the Hudson River many days. I build my own stereo speakers and canoe paddles, and, I cook, a lovely, healthy dinner every night. And my dog, Murray and I are inseparable.

00:28:37:03 - 00:28:53:00
Kevin Eikenberry
Awesome. And another thing, I know that you do a lot, and you don't have to have spent much time reading your work to know this is that you read a lot. So what's something that you're reading now, have read recently, or you feel led to share with us?

00:28:53:02 - 00:29:26:08
Seth Godin
So I've been cleaning out my bookshelves because it's been getting out of control, so I grab for that. I have recently touched that. I think people haven't read or haven't read recently. Here's the first one. It's called Nikon. Nikon. It's a Japanese philosophy of gratitude and grace. It's life changing. Then there are the novels of Elliott Pepper, only one L and only two peas in Pepper and his bandwidth trilogy will really rock you.

00:29:26:08 - 00:29:56:00
Seth Godin
It's great. Two more How Magicians Think by the brilliant Joshua J. And the last one, which you may have read but is worth revisiting, is a beautiful constraint because constraints are in a problem constrained to the point. And when I think about the gifts that authors have given me from around the world years and years after they wrote them, I'm just trying to live up to that legacy.

00:29:56:02 - 00:30:12:11
Kevin Eikenberry
And that's a fantastic answer. All those links will be in the show notes, of course, as well as a link to Seth latest book, this is Strategy. Seth, where are you at a point? People, any anything, any place you want? I mean, obviously we'd love for them to buy a copy of the book, but where do you want to point people?

00:30:12:13 - 00:30:13:13
Kevin Eikenberry
And, you know, if you.

00:30:13:13 - 00:30:31:15
Seth Godin
Go to to Seth's dot blog, I've got 9000 posts there. But if you go to set up blogger tips, you can find out about the strategy deck, which I'm super proud of and because you need something, the collectible Ashkenazi Godin Strategy Chocolate bar.

00:30:31:16 - 00:30:33:09
Kevin Eikenberry
So collectible.

00:30:33:13 - 00:30:37:06
Seth Godin
Collectible. There's a trading card inside and everything beautiful.

00:30:37:10 - 00:31:03:04
Kevin Eikenberry
I love that. But before we go, before I let Seth go, before I let you go, the question I ask you all every week, don't ask asking questions of Seth. But I got one question for you. So when I ask every single week and it's now what? What action are you going to take as a result? Like, what's the point of this if you just were entertained, like hopefully you enjoyed it, but there's other things it might be more entertaining, but there might be few things that you do this week that could be of greater value to you.

00:31:03:04 - 00:31:21:14
Kevin Eikenberry
But none of it matters unless you take action. Whether it's having that bringing that group together to have that 20 minute zoom call, the first one, or whatever else it might be for what we talked about. The point is to take action. If we don't take action, what's the point? Seth, thanks for being here. It's such a pleasure to have you.

00:31:21:16 - 00:31:24:03
Seth Godin
Thanks, Gavin. Keep making a ruckus. We need you.

00:31:24:05 - 00:31:37:20
Kevin Eikenberry
We're going to keep doing that. We're going to do that here every week. One of the things one of these really, that is here every week, another episode of the Remarkable Leadership Podcast. You know what to do. Like it? Tell someone else to subscribe. Get them to join us. You know, do those things. We'll see you next. Things.