Here’s the gist of the hour-long conversation. Godin’s message is to do work you’re proud of, for a specific group of people, and to judge it by whether it helped them, not by how many people noticed.
The foundation: “Who’s it for, and what’s it for?”
Godin asks this about every project. He wants a precise answer: the smallest audience that would be enough, and the specific change you’re trying to make for them. If your pitch amounts to “I’m for anyone,” you’re a commodity. His examples:
- A hairdresser who only cuts curly hair, about 10 clients a day.
- A New York broker who only sells apartments in one luxury building.
- A small-town realtor who knows all 2,000 houses and acts like the town’s unofficial mayor.
- A truck driver who specializes in moving expensive collector cars (“Get me Terry”).
Being this specific has two effects. You have to be willing to say “Sorry, it’s not for you” without apologizing. And you should regularly send people to your competitors, the way a Ferrari dealer sends a carpooling parent to the Volvo dealership. He also urges you to be idiosyncratic, because “the normal spot is already taken.”
Running a business vs. doing the craft
- Running a granola business means almost never making granola. It means logistics, marketing, packaging, finance and managing people. Godin’s wife runs a gluten-free bakery with 80+ employees and doesn’t bake the brownies. So ask how you actually want to spend your day.
- He advises against glamorous businesses, which fill up with hobbyists. Pick a problem that people with money will pay to have solved.
- Freelancer vs. entrepreneur. A freelancer gets paid when they work and can’t scale. An entrepreneur uses assets, often other people’s money, to build something that earns while they sleep. Both are fine. The danger is the “dead zone” in between: 8 to 30 people, you’re doing every job, you’re underpaid and burned out.
- The trap is “hiring yourself” because you’re the cheapest available worker. Each time you’re tempted, ask: What am I hiding from? Godin admits he did this at his early internet company, where 50 people reported to him directly.
- For freelancers, the way up is better clients, not more clients. Better clients pay more, challenge you more and talk about you more. His example is book-cover designer Chip Kidd, whom nobody argues with about typography.
- “Choose your clients, choose your future”: your customers decide what your days look like. McDonald’s has stopwatch inspectors; Danny Meyer’s restaurants don’t.
Marketing
- Showing up consistently on social media is “a trap.” People don’t buy just because you’re familiar to them. Marketing tells a story that creates tension (fear of missing out or falling behind), and buying relieves it. One man got 40 million TikTok views and sold four books.
- Ignore vanity numbers. “The people who like you online don’t like you.” Measure who you helped and what customers actually do. Mel says she doesn’t even have the login for her show’s download stats.
- Set up a barrier so a one-star Google review can’t make you change something that’s working.
- Most businesses shouldn’t make the founder “the face of the brand.” Patagonia’s logo is about the customer, not the founders.
Careers (for people with jobs)
You have a personal brand either way: it’s what coworkers expect from you. There’s a shortage of people who make promises and keep them, so aim to be “someone we would miss if you were gone.” If your boss doesn’t deserve that from you, find another job. Also watch out for the “world’s worst boss,” who is often your own negative self-talk. The fix is to find a circle: support two or three people doing interesting work, and they’ll usually return the favor.
Decisions, fear and feedback
- Decisions vs. outcomes (from poker champion Annie Duke): a good decision is one a good decision-maker would make with the information available. How it turns out is a separate matter; winning the lottery doesn’t make buying the ticket wise.
- Fear: to feel what selling is like, try offering strangers a $10 bill for a $5 at a bus station. The fear is about transacting with someone who might say no, not about the product. His Girl Scout story: they stopped asking “Want to buy cookies?” and asked “What’s your favorite Girl Scout cookie?” Sales went way up. You can’t make fear go away, but you can “dance with it.” Posting on Instagram is a way of avoiding it.
- Feedback: criticism of your product isn’t criticism of you. If a customer isn’t on board, refund them and let them go. “It’s not for you” is a perfectly legitimate sentence.
Hobbies, quitting and perfectionism
- Don’t let a business ruin your hobby. Once it’s a business, it belongs to the customers. Selling to friends is a “disaster” because it trades on the friendship instead of earning the sale.
- The Dip: some hard stretches come before things get easier, like quitting the gym in February. Others are just a slog that keeps getting worse. Your past effort is gone either way, so decide on what lies ahead. Most people who walked away wisely are glad they did.
- Perfectionism: if your work meets the spec and would help someone, “how dare you hold it back?” Ship it to a few people and improve it.
First step
Write three completely different short business plans. Each one answers: who’s it for, what’s it for, who am I serving, and how will I know it’s working? Then pick one at random. This keeps you from falling in love with one idea and just defending it. His snow example was a snowman architect, a snow-shoveling business in Buffalo, or importing snow shovels. “If you don’t have time to write three different business plans, I don’t think you have time to start a business.”
Parting words: this is hard to do alone, so find someone to do it with. Tell yourself the truth, measure the right things, and “do work you’re proud of for people who care.”
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