Seth Godin on CreativeLive | Chase Jarvis LIVE | ChaseJarvis

Hello everyone, how are you doing? Welcome to the episode of Chase, take us

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. I'm Chase Jarvis, your host, your guy, you're on creativeLIVE, specifically the 30 Days of Genius series. Here in this series I spoke to top creative entrepreneurs and thought leaders on pick their brains and help you

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Incredibly inspiring, incredibly practical advice from these people. Oh my goodness, my guest today, you will meet him so soon. when I start talking about him, he's the author of 18 books, 18 New York Times best-selling books the way he's current, oh my gosh, I've been following this guy for I think maybe 10 12 years, a dangerously long time. long, has been a great inspiration. For me, his current project is the alternative MBA that he will talk about at the school he built from scratch. My guest today is none other than Seth Godin. Welcome Seth. Thank you very much for inviting me.

Alright. Thank you very much for being here. Seth again. Welcome Jace, it's great to see that you came to New York to be with you and it was worth the trip. We've already been visiting a bit off camera. As I said in my introduction, I've been paying attention. what you have been doing for more than a decade but which is enormously inspiring for me and for millions and Brazilians among others what is your secret that there is no secret that is the best part you know when we think of things that are impossible that is what What revolutions do is that they allow the impossible, they destroy things that are perfect, the record industry was perfect, the travel agency business was perfect, the stock photography industry was perfect and then something impossible appears and we can look at that and say well, there's no hope or we can say how interesting, what an opportunity not to explore to find out what happens next and we can persist as we move forward.

There is no secret. There is no mountain you must climb. Where someone will whisper in your ear and tell you the correct answer. The answer is there's no right answer, that's beautiful and I feel like the moment, I guess, is always like now or now is really special. You know, there's this perception that we have. You are happy? Well, if someone grew up. in Borelli India was in your shoes, you could bet they would be raving about the tools of someone you know who lived under the last king of France saw the resources that even the poorest among us have access to they would be raving happiness is a The point of view now is a point of view, you can say I need to wait until all my ducks are in a row, but what I tell people is, when you get that duck, what are you going to do with it and do we have our ducks?

They may not all be in a perfect row, but the best way to be where you want to be in a year or ten years is to do something today that you would be glad you did. It's a powerful medicine, so I love something you said in a talk, I'm not a member of the talk, so forget me, you probably know it, but it's not important, the point that is important is that you said that the person who invented the Ship also invented the shipwreck, there you have it and you know, you know. our audience, well the people who are paying attention to this show to make me personally creative LIVE are people who aspire to be more creative and more entrepreneurial in their lives, sometimes that's in their career, sometimes that's in a hobby, but they know they want to take advantage of something. something that's been a little elusive for them or, you know, for people who are on that path or trying to hone those skills, but there are two schools of people, some who are just trying to start going from zero to one and there's a group of people who have started or are on the path and running it's like going to the next level so when I know that, for me and I've corresponded with our audience for years and in some cases maybe even one of each. and there is fear about the next step, so for the person who invented the ship, also invented the shipwreck, what would you say to me?

Because I am always keen for you sir to enlighten me and more importantly the audience on At Home, what is the advice to overcome that kind of fear? Next up, you call yourself the 30 Days of Genius series and on some level you're trying to flatter me, but that's not really what genius means and Liz Gilbert has spoken. about this genius is an old term for the voice in our head that is capable of doing something for the first time is capable of being generous is capable of being original and our job is to let the genius out you are not a genius we are all carry genius , so let's call it 30 days of awesomeness because every person who sees this has awesomeness too.

Now the challenge of letting out the genius is that it may not work and that expression that it may not work is very difficult, say it out loud, I say it out loud. strong all the time because fear cannot be overcome fear will not go away fear is built into us for a good reason literally DNA survival yes and the thing is we are wrong because you had a reason to be afraid during the Spanish Inquisition and you have a reason to be afraid of baseball bats flying into position, so your amygdala activates, your lizard brain goes into defensive mode, but if you have to give a presentation at work or talk to your kids at school third grade class, you're scared because what exactly is going to happen nothing so we have all this fake fear now you can paralyze yourself trying to make it go away you can read everything and study everything and be sure that you're right that's exhausting the other thing you can do It's I can dance with it and if you dance with fear and say oh, it's a compass, it's giving me a clue that I'm onto something and I'm doing something that might not work, so here's to it if the magic of our time comes in in action.

The cost of being a photographer today compared to what it cost Ansel Adams to be a photographer The cost of being a published writer today Cost in time, effort and risk compared to what it cost Hemmingway to be a writer There is no comparison, so that what we get what you have to do is keep playing and if you can keep playing, you know, imagine I grew up in Buffalo where the bowling leagues are right and one of the drivers of bowling is that you have to pay per game, so I only got three games. watch my rolls well what if you had unlimited bowling if you had unlimited bowling you could practice different shots you could practice different approaches don't worry when I got to score that's where we live now unlimited bowling and so we have to decide if we're constantly trying to take it right in the middle, which is boring and won't get us anywhere or do we have the guts to say: you know this might not work, but I'll do it persistently and consistently. and present it generously so that it is like the first pillar that anyone who considers themselves creative must recognize that if you ask for a guarantee you are on the wrong line, there are certainly no guarantees and creativity is confusing. sometimes painful, one of the things that I felt like you hit squarely on the mark, is that yes, I also espoused a digital genius in all of us and, if you're familiar with Michael Meade's work, the idea that it really try to discover that place inside you or the voice and some people call it intuition you can call it genius what are some specific mechanisms to unlock that yes, we have unlimited bowling is your recipe that is really unlimited bowling that to unlock it what you need What I have What to do is try many things or how would you say?

That's me putting words in your mouth but you're telling me how we should think about the actual act of harnessing that because that's what people want. There is a genius in all of us. I'm like someone doesn't like his temper. Nobody raises their hand. It's never like I want my temper. Yes, those people lie. Alright. I think we can recognize that most people are talented. So if you have talent and you are doing a banal job why is it not that you don't know how to do something worth highlighting it is that you don't want to why you don't want to because you are afraid because you are afraid because it may not work because you will be criticized because you will lose followers, so if you look at how most people spend their time online, they spend their time online getting ready on social media to make sure they are in sync and safe. in the center and that when we receive a one-star review on Amazon for something we made, we rush to read the one-star review.

I've never met an author who said they read all my 1 star reviews and now I'm a better writer so I stopped reading my 5 one-all reviews that I stopped reading four years ago nothing bad has happened to me from reading zero no It makes my job better for me to hear anonymous people tell me I don't know what I'm doing, but we're looking for it, yeah, we're very strange, no, I don't think most people really want to do that kind of creative work and I do. I can tell by the way they spend their time, so I refuse to give people advice and tactics because that's just another way of hiding.

I'm using the same pencil as Stephen King. I looked at the I have a moleskin. I have my travel bag set up just like I learned online, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, none. Of those things matter at all, they're just side effects of someone figuring out how to deal with what Steve Pressfield calls resistance, how to deal with it and everyone will deal with it differently. I'm more interested in teaching something else. how to see if you can see the world as it is and not as you want it to be letting out your genius becomes a thousand times easier so for me the expensive lesson was in '92 and '93 I had something that you didn't have no man here had Internet access there was no World Wide Web so it was Archie and Veronica and the plumbing to my office was $400 a month and I was doing you know I was a writer I had a freelance writer and I was looking on Book Packager and I saw this and I said, I know I'll do a book about it because that's what I did, that was my hammer, this was a nail, in the same period of time, two guys in California, David and Jerry, saw what I saw. and they made a website called Yahoo and since Pecos was worth eighty billion dollars, then my half would have been worth 40.

It cost me 40 billion dollars to wear the wrong glasses, but once you learn to see with new eyes and say, wait , wait wait. wait, here's this new platform. I can overwhelm her with generosity. I'm not going to worry about the business model. I'm going to worry about touching people well. Next thing you know, you have 5 million followers on Instagram and people are waiting. a guarantee waiting for Instagram to come out fools waiting for advice on tactics once again left in the dust complaining because they didn't want to get on the boat because there might be a shipwreck so I think if you find yourself taking notes instead of being present, for For example, you are hiding, no one takes notes on a date, they are present, so don't take notes during a creativeLIVE course because that is not what is taught, you can go back and see it again, what is taught is possible.

You feel it here, can you reconnect with what the genius feels? that's available, so when I can't I was starting in the book business the first year I received 800 rejection letters in a row 800 800 I sold my first book on the first day and then I received 800 rejections which meant that every day three or four letters with a stamp that said we don't like you we don't trust you we don't think you have much talent no I don't want to give you money, go away, they didn't say any of those things. I thought that's what you read, you read, if the Internet had existed, I just said, "Okay and publish it for the world." Nobody could stop me.

Well, now that we live. in this world where you don't need to be chosen, and you said one thing in your kind introduction: I've written all these New York Times bestsellers. I have written on the New York Times Bestsellers in a long time because the New York Times Bestseller list is a scam and I have refused to participate in it, so I would rather write a book that people want to read rather than write something that pleases certain people who do certain things and makes the New York Times decide that it should do it. Being on some list because I don't want to be chosen, so I say out loud, don't choose me, you're a scam and that frees me up to do what I want, what I don't need to do. getting obsessed with seeing the world the way it used to be wow, that was a rant but I have a lot of RAM but that's literally what makes me so happy to sit with you because you're the one having your rant, how your complaints differ from the Other than that they have a core of wisdom that is a mile wide and a thousand miles deep.

Actually, I was reliving while you were talking about the early days of the Internet, my particular experience, which I like to think is very similar to the experience of manypeople identify themselves as creative or entrepreneurial, which is this, there's kind of a constant cycle, it's a conversation, it was a conversation in my head, if I do this and I post it, what's going to happen and there's a million scenarios. that goes through your head and what I discovered for myself was that conversation was incredibly toxic, yeah, and what I hope to overcome with this interview and others is that what you should do is conversation we have this weird part of our brain that tells us that This is a useful conversation, that this is exactly what thinking is and the reality is that it is very toxic and we should stay away from it, is your response to that narrative.

That false story we're telling ourselves is just doing, are you doing? what is it? Which is the answer? I mean, I'm pulling that from what you just said about getting on board instead of taking notes being present instead of judging posting, am I oversimplifying the message? So I moved to New York City in 86 87 and shortly after I got here I felt a cracking sound in my ears and if I did a certain thing with my jaw I would hear this cracking sound so I went to the ENT doctor and I told him this is what I'm doing, he told me to take this sinus medicine and it made me fall asleep so I stopped taking it and two weeks later I went back if it really bothers me every time I go. only to hear this creak and the guy said don't go like that and I can make the creak come back now.

I just did it, uh, but I stopped doing that and the creaking went away. The thing is that we are going to that place, so what can we hide and I think there is a different question that we can ask, not what will happen, the key question is what is for this meeting. I'm going to go what is it for this photo that I'm taking what is it for just put something I'm telling the world what it's for and then if we can say well it may not work but if it does I'll be glad I did it and , if it doesn't work, I have enough bank and airline quotes.

Keep doing this because if we can recognize what it's for, we can focus on why we're doing something and in that framework of saying what I do is connecting people, elevating people, giving them a smile, getting picked up by a gallery, earning life, whatever it is. Oh, am I a professional who does this so that the work matches the purpose of the work? So you tell me you want to be a world famous architect and then you show me your plans and I say, well, they're good. plans for a single family home in Cleveland, but show me another architect who has followed the path you are trying to follow, this work that you are doing that you say is for X is actually for Y, so align yourself and the sooner we can understand what it is for and decide that it is important enough that we are willing to fail along the way.

We can stop having that other toxic conversation any time we want to stop the crackling in our ears. I love that your recipes are so simple, but difficult to make. You know, that's my point, for those people out there, you're listening to a genius spout knowledge in a way that I don't want you to feel intimidated, but the reality is, here's the thing. What I learned from reading Seth is that there are all kinds of vitality and possibilities in what you say, the ability to stop moving your jaw that way to stop the crunching. I think the best word for me was alignment, that's really what I learned.

For me it was a right choice and there are a lot of narratives that I came to believe about myself and the art that I wanted to make versus what I was actually doing, that narrative was a false narrative and as soon as I allowed myself to go through a painful self-discovery like why are you doing this, what do you want to do with your art, that it was almost overnight that I felt free and the way that Brene Brown, someone I adore, keeps a list, but she says, she says she could keep a list of this time that I keep in my wallet and these are the ones that are on this list, it's the people that I really care about what they think of me and if you're not on this list or you haven't been in the arena like someone who has exposed himself time and time again.

I don't care what you have to say because it's very difficult to live that life, so someone comes and says: I have a million followers on Twitter and my replies, but how many? of them have an opinion that matters, are you really doing it to become famous? It's right? Can you eat dinner at fancier restaurants? Will it get you an even better table than the one you have now? Why else would we have a number? If the number was simply hidden from the universe, you wouldn't be able to do the The number increases, but just because you can see the number, it's something we need to increase, so I want to shift gears and go a little further, and the truth is that I love the truth that most of the people who are watching this. and you and I in a lot of the things that we strive to do we just weren't that good at it and it's a mistake to fool yourself into thinking that you're as good at writing songs as Bob Dylan and you're as good at rapping as Macklemore. and you are so good so i get emails all the time please don't email me.

I get too many emails, but I get emails from people who said I can't do anything with this. Look at this work I do. It's amazing why. I can't why am I not more popular? Well, number one, we haven't understood what it's for and why you want to be more popular, but number two, because you're not that good and you could be good, but you haven't. I put in ten thousand hours out of a thousand hours or blood, sweat and tears to get really good at it, so if you go back to my blog post from 10 years ago, more than half of them are well below average.

A long time to blog like me, but a lot of people blog six times and say, why don't I have a million followers? So what I mean is that we live in the most populated creative universe in history. There are not three television networks, there are a billion, there are not ten record labels, there are a billion, so you have no right to any attention, you have no right to any influence, but if you dig deeper and deeper into the things that really matter . You can gain some attention. Do you decide what matters or do you let the people at home decide what matters to them?

Oh yeah, I'm not in charge of what's notable. I'm not in charge of what's important. I'm not interested, sure, I have nothing to say, but you've talked to so many people and what are the common things that people say they care about, like is there a survey course as part of your alte mba and your understanding if they are teaching what you're saying here are some of the things that I hear that matter certainly you've heard a lot of this oh yeah, what are the things that matter well and these can be? You know we can, or you can throw them out there, we can debunk them. them or you can say that these things really matter.

I just want to know from you what matters. I think the simplest answer is: would they miss you if you were gone? I don't know who they are and I know what God means, but would those people that you are seeking to have an impact miss you if you didn't show up tomorrow? Would they miss you if this new product, this new project didn't reach the world or do you just have to make all that effort? dance, look at me, look at me, jump up and down for a limited time, ah, ba, ba, ba, to play so that they actually transact with you, so that I don't care about work, so that it feels like you're just trying to make them life is transient, which is fine, everyone needs to make a living, you should probably have a job, but if you want to have this calling, like Liz Gilbert says, if you want to have this arc in your job, it sure helps you to be. lost if you weren't there, then that's the definition to me of permission marketing if that email that you were going to send to 10,000 people tomorrow if it didn't go out, how many of the 10,000 people would say where the email is and the answer is none , then you don't have permission, you're just being tolerated, so I'd like to think that if I didn't blog tomorrow, 10+ people would email me saying where your blog is. bus, what's really happening?

If you stopped creating the courses you're creating, I guess some people would show up and say, Hey Jase, where is he? That's what it means to matter, to be missed when you're not there, a very strict definition. let's talk to you send to change the saying I want to shift gears and explore pull this thread a little further one of the ways we would miss you when you were gone is that you stand out because there is a landscape and I see it it feels relatively homogeneous, there are many Bay over there and then, on the horizon, there is exactly one purple thing and my eyes or one's eyes or the market or if you want, I don't know who it is, it's them or the market, but the market.

He looks at you and you look different from everything else, so there is some attention being paid to you, is that enough or do you need it? Yes, my opinion is a little different, okay, my opinion for those of you who don't know who I am. I'm referencing a book of yours called The Purple Cow, right, sorry, go on, no, it's good. My opinion is that it's very easy to be the guy who wears a plaid suit to a funeral. It is very easy to do that thing that people notice and that is not. notable the way I use the phrase notable means that someone thinks a comment is worth making and if someone comments on what word spreads not because they are spamming the world but because people are talking to each other, the challenge if Let's get creative about what we want them to say if we want them to say what idiot wears plaid at a funeral.

Go ahead and wear paintings at a funeral, but we want them to say you need to see this, it will transform you if we want. Let them say: can you believe how generous that act was? We want them to say this, this is something new and fresh, then build on that, very often people say, wow, we just made this cool commercial for our ketchup, it's a purple cow, no, it's not really. It's just a commercial right that people aren't going to talk about because it elevates them and they're standing there talking about it because it's like you know that seeing a one-armed paper hanger is one thing, but it's not something that we would get lost.

It's a sideshow, so the challenge we have is to make art that does, and I use the word art very carefully here, is that we have to be serious enough about the process, that we are proud of what we made and achieved it. in a way that the kind of person we care about, like Bernay's list, tells someone else that it is a direct extrapolation of the idea of ​​the virus, but not from another of his 8 18 books, a virus that is free in line if anyone wants to share it says ideas that spread win now like any disease and epidemiology that followed follow a vector they don't infect everyone no one has been infected by a disease on the entire planet so figure out what vector you want Napster it didn't really spread in nursing homes Napster spread in college on campuses for a reason you needed access to high speed internet and you had to be interested in new music, but you had to have a lot of friends or lack of money, probably like this es, so none of those things were true in nursing homes, they were true. on a college campus so we can design what we build to share.

I like to say the following rhetorical question, first person to have a fax machine, what did you do with it? Not very true, I can't use a fax machine, it's totally useless. So how can you create art that doesn't work unless you share it? So the most recent book I did I self-published. Because? Because I know what to do when it's your turn. Thank you and the idea of ​​your turn is that I will refuse to sell. you a copy if you buy one I'll send you two if you buy three I'll send you five if you buy 96 I'll send you 120 why because I wrote it for you to share so that the people around you would be on the same page as you It turns out that if you give it a book to someone, it feels totally different than if you go to a bookstore and choose to buy a book.

The gift of a book is something magical that changes the conversation, so that's part of the ability to observe. Trying to incorporate it into my work, it works best if your colleagues know the phrase Purple Cow. It works better if you can be held accountable because everyone has understood the same concept, so let's talk architecture for the sayings you've referenced. arches of architecture architecture, yes, the sharing part for people at home who are thinking about their next project or is it wrong to design something that doesn't involve sharing because that's the best way to do it or it's there.

Are there two different sides of the same coin that is there, on one side where it is private, polished and polished, and there is another side where you post, share, design and decide how you want it to be to meet you or your brand? your work is a big question so my thesis stolen from Michael Shrike is that anything worth doing is worth doing because you changed someone else and if we don't make change happen, what did we do right to make the change happen? It could be many things, yes? let's talk about brandsharley-davidson is a multi-million dollar brand because they changed disrespected outsiders into revered insiders and for the people who have had that harley-davidson transformation happen it is priceless, that is the change and we will do anything but Apple Computer, we could replace everything Apple does with anything else, except Apple transforms people into people who have good taste in digital products, that's their arc, that's the change they make, they keep trying to scale what it means to have good taste. so this change is sometimes amplified if your idea spreads, sometimes it is amplified if you create the dynamic of the fax machine, the purple cow, but you don't have to do it that way, let's say you are a playwright and your goal is to change The people who come to your play become people who are able to think more deeply about gay rights, which is why the Laramie project was successful because if you went to that play you were transformed, you were silently transformed with the words and someone knew them, that was all, but it worked. made a change happen now the byproduct is you and I've heard about the play, word got out, but spreading the word isn't the point, that's just dick bashing that amplifies the point, the point is, Can you make a change happen?

That's the job. made without changes or that from which change does not result is that failed work well I don't know how to use the what to talk about I said when you say work then Starbucks Howard Schultz let's talk about independent artists let's leave independent artists and he said Okay, if you're going to make a song just by Pleasant and you're going to define success, since I got some royalties from it, I'd say you're making a living, but I'm not ready to say you're making art for it. to be art it has to be something that maybe doesn't work, maybe doesn't work by my definition, means it didn't change anyone, yeah we need to play some music in the elevator and maybe someone will give you a royalty check to pay for it . the Muzak machine but you didn't change anything so don't call yourself an artist at that time you're a pianist that's different from being an artist so Jackson Pollock had a brother and his brother's name was Charles and Charles Pollock painted the same Thomas Hart Benton Thomas Hart Benton super important artist in the 1920s, they were both his teachers, so Charles was a painter, he just copied Thomas Hart Benton Jackson Pollock was an artist because he changed us, that's my distinction, so the intention, what role does intention play in that right? because if you don't have an intention, then you can't fail, right?

What I'm saying is you better have the intention, you better be able to at least tell yourself that this is the change I'm trying to make and if it happens then you can declare victory if it doesn't happen you can declare non-victory , but either way you can make the following work again, okay, let's get out of the very theoretical and talk about something very tactical or tangible. that's you, so I think people are very familiar with your work, there's always curiosity about the man or woman behind the work and tell us a little bit about what you're reading right now, what inspires you, realizing that we are all different and inspiration comes from many places, but I have a feeling that the world wants to know what you are listening to what you are reading how you are spending your time now you know that I have had 15 crises in the last 20 years that I have been stuck and I think I can't do another one of those.

I need to go this way or this way and over time, partly through meditation and partly as I get older, I'm willing to sit with it for a lot longer than I used to so I can be if they were more of six hours, you get it, I had six hours, it's my max, I got any of the next things I'm going to fail now I can sit with it and watch and breathe and Say you know diving into the next obvious thing is probably a way to hide , so I'm in one of those stages. I'm really thinking a lot about education.

I wrote a 35,000 word book that is free on the Internet called Stop Stealing Dreams. years ago about how our education system, which gave us so much, is now fundamentally and completely broken and that parents have forgotten to ask what it is for, what school is for this class, what it is for, why are we teaching this? in all this time. the standardized test, what does this sticker on the back of my car mean that says I'm paying $250,000 for my student to go to a famous university? why what are we trying to produce here? A smaller rant that led me to some of the courses I'm building, but for me, the most you know is that if I look at a photo and look deeply at it, that changes me, that's a miracle, but the most direct tactical way of change that we call education we say you will enroll in this process and the word enrollment we can talk for an hour this word enrollment of will you volunteer to let me change you in a way that you are asking to be changed?

It's very different from approaching a stranger. on the street and we say let's do the math strangers I didn't sign up for that right and then when we say you will change can we change change to what change in what direction and for me I think the biggest influence is changing people? in people who believe they have a genius in people who believe they are capable of changing other people in people who can see the world as it is and who want and know how to make these changes happen to influence others to do the same .

Change will happen in the future, that is heavy, in the right way, education, something obviously deeply exciting to me, that is the basis of the creative life. I have said in hundreds of stages, if not more, that if our parents had one job, we would have five. and the next generation will have five at the same time, so we live in an era where the existing infrastructure in education, specifically higher education. I'm not really that focused on K through 12. I think we can talk about the fundamentals of education, we'll talk about that in a second, but I look around me and I see people fundamentally unprepared for the world we live in and struggling to find their way. just the meaning but the ability to connect to the world mm-hmm and It would be the equivalent of hiring someone to come work at your business and not giving them any training and just throwing them out into the world, which is largely what we ask of the world to do when we don't provide an educational infrastructure, so believe, I like the creative life and I said, well, what are the good things about education, and I said, well, you get people who know what they're talking about, you get people who want to learn, there is a communication between those two entities and there is also this other thing which is that students can communicate with other students.

Yes, that's what's working. I believe that learning is not broken. Education is broken. So what about learning? Can we elevate it and bring it down to a scalable model and how can we bring people along? who are at one end of that pipeline and providing mass access and transparency, and how do you elect at the other end of that pipeline not just someone who knows something about it, but the best people in the world? That is the basis of creative life. right, what is it about the educational system that bothers you and what are we at Creative Live?

What is going well for you in the MBA? Well, then both of my kids went to public school, so I saw it firsthand. I'm also a public school kid. I love it. public school public school is a key part of our culture, but the bad thing is that it was invented by industrialists for industrialists. You can read the story. It is fascinating. I won't go into too much detail, but basically, if you want obedient factory workers, help. If you start with a six-year-old and teach them to sit in a dark room, sitting still, taking notes for eight hours, do it for 12 years and when you get them in your hands, they will follow the instructions, but we won't.

We need that, we need the opposite that the standardized test was invented because it was an emergency in the 1920s, the guy who invented it disowned it and there was such a backlash over the loss of the tool that they lost their job as chancellor at the university because of it. daring to say that standardized testing was stupid what he invented that this command and control model of saying I'm in the front of the room you must obey me this model that says school is for lectures is stupid Sal Khan is perfectly pointed out that We should give lectures at night, we should see the best person in the world teach the class and do the homework during the day, when someone can interact with us, that makes a lot more sense, so there are all these challenges, but for me, yes you talk to someone, my friend Peter was in the Peace Corps in 1969 1975 something like that, he can still tell you everything that happened and I say, but Peter the year before I remember that course you took that clip, he doesn't remember it because the Peace Corps is he did something. and a conference was held, so in the alternative NBA that I built we do not have conferences of any kind, there are no videos, there is no secret content, zero, that is a discipline that we have, it is not open to a large number of people, it's just for 200 people at a time, it doesn't happen asynchronously at your convenience, it happens in sync with all these people around the world synchronized in a slack room in a workshop and it's about projects, 14 projects in 28 days, so I don't need a lot of people I can be demanding, it can be expensive, I can get people to apply, I can have coaches, we can have things, everything is designed to do one thing, use all the tools and levers I have to make people thirsty enough to go find the 10,000 lectures that are already online.

I don't need to give them another one, so we don't have a content problem. We don't lack intelligent people to talk to us. What we have is a hearing problem. we choose not to listen because we are afraid that those people that you are talking about who are stressed are stressed because they are fighting hard to get back to the old days, when, when do we get back to normal, when can we get back to this time they will choose me, so They will tell me what to do and it will be stable and that is how I will learn.

Millennials are stuck now because the only jobs that are like that are baristas and I love baristas, but that's not a career and don't do it just because you feel like what you were trained to do, instead take a deep breath. , realize that the day has passed and figure out how you can expect the insecurity and uncertainty of this might not work out. I think it's fascinating that it all comes out of this. it may not work and there is the ability and you also mentioned meditation, there are so many things I want to do. I'm trying to put a pin in like three things right now, meditation, something that's a practice that I've talked about very publicly about being a game changer because it made me be okay with uncertainty and being in the moment like, oh , this is what fear feels like instead of trying to respond to it.

I'm going to stay out of this state of fear so I can do meditation, I want to continue insisting on this education thing, that's fine, I'm also moving forward. settings around the world and talk about the factory on the farm two things the education system was based on the farm being you the reason we have summers off from school is literally so you can go pick the crops it's not just like people and you don't We don't stop learning well in the summer, it's very much a childcare mechanism, we have to go to school and then go to work in the field, the factory part is fascinating for me, like you said, the raw material goes one end and then everyone moves through the system regardless of their ability or interest or regardless of many other things at the same rate, theoretically they learn or are force-fed the same thing if it is defective we reprocess yes and yes oh we have a bug in the system, send it back And then you keep moving this and in the end the goal of a factory is to make similar items, yes exactly, and the more efficient a factory is, if it lacks efficiency then It is basically broken because it does not define what falls. outside the definition of what a factor is and then we have this situation before us where we are asking our culture to be innovative, the word innovation and creativity is activated anyway and yet we don't really have a system which is a fraction of the innovation that is required to produce the goods we are asking for, that we have a system but parents refused to use it and the system goes right where I want parents to tell their children. directly-a is not the interesting point is the point that parents should tell their children what project you are leaving, they should tell their children what problem you have solved that has never been solved before until you do it, you will not be allowed do the task that areparents, those who have good intentions, yes, those who do not have the guts to tell their children to do what they are passionate about, as long as they are good at it and I don't mind getting into a famous university because all the data is very clear , famous colleges are overrated and offer very little apart from high school with more binge drinking and we have this other alternative but parents are going to lead this before schools get the message so I think this is very I'm curious to know that I always put the responsibility on this student and you, in this conversation, have put the responsibility on the parents, maybe it's because we're thinking about different times when education writes about continuing because I look very much the current system of k. -12 and say "wow", someone else can try to address that topic, that's a big problem because there's the guy, if you're thirty it's too late for your parents to help you, when you're 30 it's up to you.

Sure, but just for the sake of this conversation for the sake of our audience, let's assume that K-12 isn't correct or that you're not 14 and yes I commend you for reaching out and looking for alternative ways to learn, but just say that you're an adult, a young adult, or an older adult, and you're looking for some kind of continuation and so I think it's a good place for us to restart that conversation because we take the responsibility off the parents and now we put it on the individual so well that I had a Excellent, crystal-clear advice, parents, here's how to think about it.

What is this? What is the analogous advice you give to the individual? So what I say to an individual is: where are you being generous? Completely selfless and generous so that an organization or the person you care about has changed for the better. Can you do that over and over again because once that's your goal, the stakes feel different because now it's not your job now. is your vocation now could it even be your hobby? you can model that behavior without doubting yourself, you can go somewhere, so I highly recommend people have a blog, a daily blog, you don't even have to put your name on it if every day you blog a point of view about something that When you see a statement, your brain will act differently two weeks from now because you will be thinking about what you want to say tomorrow and after you have done it for six weeks, you will be able to see what you said six weeks ago in this act. public.

Journaling is risk-free. All the rational parts of your brain understand that nothing bad can happen to you for doing it, but you will still find yourself stuck because you realize that if you do the safe thing, if you make the list, if you do it. can get some traffic, can get picked up, that feels like a win, it's not a win because you haven't changed anyone, you haven't moved the ball forward, so I can't tell you precisely what narrative will help you undo in a start. form your own narrative, but we know it's possible. I like the sport that I choose for myself is skate skiing.

I love the skate game that you may have seen at the Olympics. Oh, very clear. So I took it. I took a lesson. It totally changed it for me. from a guy who was an Olympic ski jumper and Matt said, listen Seth, the whole sport, the whole thing is that the person who leans the most forward wins and I said, but Matt, what happens if you lean too far forward? It's not connected to those he said you fall on your face, that's it, that's the whole sport, leaning forward wins the most, but the person who leans too far forward falls on his face, so if you want To be good at skating and skiing, you must be prepared to fall on your face.

It's the only way to be good at skateboarding. Skiing needs to be prepared to do it, so when we think of you showing up here today, you've decided that you want to be seen as a creative date and that you want to have this practice. It comes with lots of fun treats and the toy is happy, but there is a cost and the cost is that it may not work and if you can't accept it, you have to find a way to trick yourself into accepting it because I can't. solve your problem by saying here is a way to do it that will work.

I have no idea how to do it and how to make it work. You wake up every morning most days having this one, but we're excited that you woke up this morning, how? Face the day What are you doing well? 1977 Age 17 I decided that facing the day didn't feel good, so I see it as an opportunity. I haven't hit the snooze button once since 1977. The snooze button isn't a thing for me. That part of what I've tried to do with my work is create a life where I get out of bed eager because I have another chance to bowl unlimited, that's beautiful, you get out of bed now, are you going to create for go straight?

There is a kind of unlimited bowling, it seems to you like producing work or something else. I have practice. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you what it is because it doesn't matter enough. I mean, people love to talk. about his practice and stuff. I'm not superstitious about it. I just think it's a great way to hide to use my practice because it's my practice. Could you encourage others to have their own practice? How come you don't have a practice? That's all. when, if you go into surgery, you'd want the surgeon to do things exactly the same way every time, right?

Yeah, right, I mean, she's practiced exactly that this method exists, it's like, oh wait, I forgot to wash. Hand, no, you were not an example against there being a method and it turns out that there is a lot of data, there is no method that is demonstrably better than another method. I mean, there's no operating room, but in general, if you're Bob Dylan. does things completely differently than Taylor Swift, there is nothing in common other than that they produce an artifact that means something to people and they consider it a practice because there is no desire to receive prescriptive information yet, maybe never.

I have been contracted for the rights at this time because we have not accessed them and it hurts my ability to reach a broader audience. If I wrote things that there is a high demand for, it would reach in the mornings, it would reach a lot more people who are not on my to-do list, but having a methodology or having a system is fine, it is something that I need to do to do my job, but I don't think details like Lifehacker are a very good way to waste half an hour. I love it. reading about standing desks to do this or that, do this and I stand on it, yes, but that's it, that's just entertainment, it's not the core of what we need to do, okay, let's go back to the alternative because I think which is a remarkable concept to have been part of, you know, 120 other talented people built creativeLIVE.

I know that it's hard to build education and that what exists and the existing paradigms largely don't work, what was the basis for you wanting to do it well, so I'm on the record with this rant about education, so I went and did a couple of courses with shared skills, they worked very well. Among the most popular ones I've had, Skillshare changed their business model, I changed you, and they were a huge success. and I felt good about what I did and then I look at the numbers: 48 percent of people finished the course, which turns out to be ten times the standard and 20 times most courses, but half the people left even though the things only you know about this course. for ours, just where they are going, what is happening right, then I realized that what happens is when education becomes difficult, that is the only time education works because easy education does not work when education becomes difficult.

It gets difficult, most people leave unless there is significant social pressure, so it's really uncomfortable to leave Princeton. You have to disappoint a lot of people that you are an expert on. I know how many people you have to be really adept at letting people down. The cost of dropping an e-course is $19. $19 and the course. dropping out of a free MOOC is zero, so I said what would happen if I broke all the rules of massive courses and did the opposite. Could I really use that freedom to create and design a world where I can transform people and there are hundreds of us? students and I can tell you that we have a 98% completion rate and we have transformed every person and I have never done a project where that was true, I have never put something into the world that changes people the way this It changes people and it's exciting.

To me, and you know, people say, well, you're self-selecting, very clearly, Harvard does that too, so the idea is that if you enroll from people who want to go on this journey, the journey is much more likely to work. , and? What I'm trying to do is say that climbing early is not the goal, the goal is to be good, the goal is to be worth it, the goal can be missed if you didn't do it and that gives you the freedom to make your decision. time and scale slowly if you scale at all and if no people re-enroll in the alt NB a-- I'm fine with that because I didn't build a giant building I don't have a giant team I don't have I have investors.

I'm just saying I did this, it may not work, I want to try it and if people try it and it works, I'm thrilled that it's no different than the backstory for creating creativeLIVE and looking at the Gannett market, having kind of a mediocre professors who didn't really know what they were talking about, they weren't world class artists in their particular discipline, it was very, very intentional to create something that was free so you could come in and smell it. free books all the time that was the idea behind the freemium model, we can involve a lot of people and a lot of people, if they don't have resources, they can still come in and have the same experience, they have a free version and they complete it and they get all the benefits and we found that people who are low on resources have this incredible success rate with the excellent Avadh and the other side of the coin is that we actually made our classes, they are the most expensive of any open platform, they are not behind a paywall if you want to own this, you choose to pay for it, but the average class is a hundred dollars compared to some of the other platforms where it's $19.99 or there's a particular Skillshare that you mentioned, 33 cents a month, like there , but for the person.

Who wants it to be perfect? I'm sure it's just a difference. Absolutely sure. What I'm trying to say is that when pricing you were talking about selecting their price themselves is a way of selecting the people who are willing to do it. lean into the product you're building, regardless of the economics of online learning, what do you think the future of continuing education looks like? What is the future? Well, here's what I think is going to happen: There is clearly a higher education bubble. clearly it's going to burst, but it's going to burst slowly and the way it's going to be born slowly will be gnawed to death by people like you and me who, if we can train people to become curious and thirsty, The amount of other things they can learn is so great that they don't have to pay a quarter of a million dollars for certification because, like all the courses that MIT teaches, they are free, you are about to be free, so why Are the words worth a quarter of a million dollars worth? the piece of paper, the test, then what will happen little by little, the way the Internet usually does things, you will be able to create a body of work that will let the employer know that you are worth hiring now that you are not It's so convenient. like the mit certificate, but it will actually be more powerful, yes, and it will just take a while, but I think that's the future, so we will see more and more free things, we are seeing more and more expensive things.

We are going to see networks built, guilds like in the Middle Ages, the guild was everything, so if I had more energy I would build a guild and say: here are five thousand people, we spend three hours a day training, we are all connected to each other a higher level. one of us hires all of us and we put our reputation on each of these five thousand people, how much would that be worth? It would easily be worth three thousand dollars a month for each of those people, right, it's a huge industry in itself, but if you really pick the right five thousand people, that would be worth more than any diploma, so I'm focused on creative education, not just because my background is as a quote-unquote creative and I just believe in the entrepreneurship of photography design, yeah, all those.

Things are true, but I believe in creativity with a capital C, yes, and it supports a solution to all problems, global warming, world hunger, the water crisis and we must think of it as a creative solution to any problem that there may be, the challenge that I see. with the internet I'm sorry with traditional education it's this dependence on paper and they talk about all the value of your certificate it's so cool, so cool. I smile. I didn't know you had this belief coming into this conversation today which is one of the things I love. creativity with the small C and why I like to apply that's what makes lifecreative because it requires it is a fair portfolio system where you are hired and fired based on your work by people who know that you trust you because there is some kind of relationship and in place and knowing that I have been on stages all over the world again knowing that you're in the same field, I like it, it's comforting to me, but I personally have no doubt that the education of the future or the hiring of people in the future looks less and less like where you went to school than a few chunks of paper and you added more and more what you've built who you worked with who you worked for and what they would do I say about you yeah but Disick I'm waiting for the ending no it's not and there's a warning and most of the people who were teaching right now they were listening to this they wouldn't be hired, if you had to choose someone in the world. to do what you do, you would find someone better than you, so we've changed the stakes and we have to be very clear about what it used to be if you went to the Rhode Island School of Design, you got over it, you had it .

This big advantage over people starting out is gone, yeah, so when you think about it, you know when someone says I'm a freelancer and my biggest asset is my relationship with my clients. Well, if you went and asked your clients which of all the freelancers you've worked with are off the charts with the relationship, would they really choose you? This poor person writes that when someone says that I can use color light to create photographs to create an indelible image in people's heads, well, yes. I talk to people and I have seen that you are really off the charts, so I say it.

What I'm saying is that yes, this institution is falling apart, but that places an enormous responsibility on people to be honest with themselves about the job they are not going to get. Let the craft remain what it used to be just because we were able to find you and you know, two weeks ago I gave a talk to the people who make all the printed items in the country, like pens and water bottles, things like big industry, there's 50 thousand one hundred thousand people who make a living doing this, ninety percent of them have a big, thick catalog that they all have the same catalog and the same price list and you go to them and they say yes, I have these water bottles , which one do you want?

It used to be a very important added value because there was no Internet, but now there is, sort by price I'll take this bottle of water I'm done, ten percent of people actually engage with you help you find something you would never have thought of deliver something that's off the charts they're taking huge emotional risks while doing their job the other ninety percent are sitting there thinking they're in the ten percent they're not they just have a catalog so sometimes people throw me things when I'm on stage because my argument is that you didn't want the world to change, but it did now that the world has changed, don't get frustrated because people are doing exactly the same thing as you shopping, sorting by price, buying products because that's what we do when given the choice, so if you want to be treated like a commodity act like a commodity, no one is a commodity if they don't want to be, that's incredibly poignant advice, thank you very much, unfortunately for People at home, I need to finish because I promise to be respectful of your time, okay? but what I want to know is that there is certainly something that I forgot to ask you and you are a great judge of what a great interview looks and feels like so if I gave it to you you would be an amazing speaker, if I gave you the stage what I know a final point that well, I think you touched on a lot of good topics and it was a privilege to talk to you for an hour, thank you, so the first thing I have to say is don't email me, okay, too many times.

Don't say that clearly enough. Don't email me. Secondly, I want to say that we have created this platform where people can take their turn and are responsible for what they do not blame their bosses or parents. You are responsible for what they do. You could be more generous. You could take people somewhere they want to go. You could weave a web that connects the disconnected. You can see people who are not respected and treat them with respect. you deserve it all those things are available to you that's my mission is to help people understand that it's not someone else's job to do those things it's our job to do those things and we shouldn't do them tomorrow we should do them today is maybe the best and do an interview thank you very much for your time super grateful people at home you just had an hour and change with someone who has changed my life I know he will change Orange the more you pay attention to the work he does thank you very much Tune in and stay, we will have another one soon episode for you.

Thanks again. Seth, I appreciate it. Go ahead and do it.