Lead. Learn. Change.

Seth Godin - Teaching, Generosity, and Significance

Episode Summary

“Persistence is always generous.” Honesty, integrity, and enthusiasm are skills. “I won the parent lottery.” Curiosity is steeped in Why, not in What. Useful incompetence is a vital part of learning. “Where is the community orchestra in your life?” “There’s no such thing as closing thoughts.” A great definition for creativity. In his now trademark style, bestselling author, Marketing Hall of Fame inductee, entrepreneur, blogger, husband, dad, teacher, and learner Seth Godin addresses these ideas, and more, and nudges us toward adopting a different perspective about making a difference in the world. As an ardent supporter of teachers, Seth’s generosity shines through in this conversation. His latest book, Song of Significance, will shed even more light on the value of community and on taking initiative to do work that matters. You may find yourself listening twice, jotting down some notes, or sharing a listening link with others.

Episode Notes

2:50 – words (including jackalope) and an older book

4:30 – everyone “owns their own channel” now

4:50 – you don’t have to wait for permission

5:30 – teaching experience

5:45 – difference between learning and education

5:55 – connection between autodidacticism and conditions for learning

6:10 – a good day is when…

6:40 – Mr. Jon Guillaume decided to change my life

7:00 – not an accident that the arc of one’s life can be redefined because of a teacher

7:40 – helping others become who they want to be is a calling

8:40 – why the first U.S. teachers’ college was called the Normal School

9:00 – teaching to the test correlates with restrictions

9:20 – options, decisions, and choices are still available

9:40 – little things, repeated - with a goal - add up to big things

10:05 – persistence is always generous

10:20 – Beth Rudd, a great teacher with tremendous impact

11:15 – teachers are not given nearly enough recognition

12:20 – respect for public school educators

12:40 – learning creates positive tension

13:20 – useful incompetence is a tool for learning

15:00 – word choices are a symptom of how our brains work

15:35 – Will this be on the test?

15:45 – curiosity is the Why, not the What

18:00 – Song of Significance

18:15 – dignity and respect

18:45 – spectator or participant?

19:05 – questions to ask that lead to improvement

19:45 – redefining creative work

20:45 – the standard solution is not the creative one

21:40 – The Art of Possibility

22:10 – when I turn 84…

22:45 – Where is the community orchestra in your life?

23:00 – What supports your achievements?

23:35 – generosity is not synonymous with free

24:30 – raising the quality and making a difference are generous behaviors

25:00 – there are many kinds of learning

25:25 – sharing one’s thinking about what is being noticed

26:15 – writing for one’s readers and for those with whom those readers will share the writing

27:15 – attitude is a skill

28:15 – the real skills of honesty, integrity, enthusiasm, loyalty

29:05 – The Carbon Almanac and Michel Porro

29:40 – owning a camera, taking a photo, and properly using pictures with intent

30:20 – Alt text

31:30 – Seth’s mom

32:30 – generosity plus initiative equals possibility

33:00 – Sotheby’s event – imperfect but amazing

35:00 – learning from others while working together

35:35 – no such thing as closing thoughts

35:45 – the best way to pay it forward

37:25 – end

Links and credits:

Cover Photo of Seth – Darius Bahsar and Archangel

The Song of Significance 

The Art of Possibility

The Boston Philharmonic

Seth’s blog

 

 

Episode Transcription

David Reynolds:What matters most in learning the challenge, the thrill, the benefits, interacting with other people or something else entirely. What is the connection between leading and learning? Does change drive learning or does learning drive change? What's more important, teaching or learning? Is everyone a leader, a learner, a teacher, want answers? Listen in as we address these intriguing issues through commentary and with guests who share their thinking and tell us their stories. Lead. Learn. Change.

Seth Godin:       The real skills of honesty, integrity, enthusiasm, generosity, loyalty. I can go down a long list. These are all skills. You can learn 'em if you want. I have so much respect for somebody who shows up in a public school setting. Both my kids went, I went, my wife went. You're asked to do an enormous amount of stuff with a very small amount of resources. I don't think it costs you anything to hold the door open when there's someone coming in right behind you. I don't think it costs you anything to see other people as a human to offer them the generosity of dignity, of treating them with respect. Significance is the narration of our days. People who feel like they've lost significance start to get frustrated and fade away. And yet we've built an entire world that tries to rob us of significance by trading convenience for it instead. Two, to have the arc of someone's life change and then 40, 50, 70 years of benefit come out of that for the whole world. What a treat. 

David Reynolds:Seth Godin is our guest for this episode of Lead Learn Change. Seth, thanks for taking your time to speak with us today. 

Seth Godin:       Oh, it's an absolute pleasure, David. Good to talk to you. 

David Reynolds:Well, Seth is the author of more than 20 books, many of which are bestsellers and it's likely he's now sold more copies of business or marketing books than anyone ever. He has podcast at Kimbo as fantastic. And a few of my favorite book titles are What does it sound like When You Change Your Mind? That's quite a giant book by the way, and Poked the Box, which is exactly the opposite in size. And Seth comment directed to you. I also find myself occasionally picking up one of your older books that you co-wrote with Marjorie Mandel called Million Dollar Words, one of my favorites. If you ever write a sequel, I hope that you will include Sluggard and Jackelope and idiopathic, cuz I would love to read what you write for. Those are 

Seth Godin:       Great entries, jackalope in particular. And you gave me a smile thinking about Marjorie. You're one of the only people who actually owns the copy of that book. 

David Reynolds:Oh, it's a great book. I refer to it probably not as often as I should, but it's up there with each shoots and leaves. 

Seth Godin:        

David Reynolds:Take into consideration everything you've done and accomplished. You have described yourself on multiple occasions as first and foremost a teacher. I remember a specific Akimbo podcast or maybe it was an interview with someone else where you were discussing people asking you how would you introduce yourself or what do you do and And you always say, I'm a teacher. I can attest to that because of you and your colleagues Alex and Kristen. I have a podcast and a book out in the world and it's really only because of your all's insistence for us to be persistent and not wait for perfect and to ship our work and get it out there. And that pulled me across the finish line on both of those. So I want to use this moment to say thanks for that teaching and for the ripple effect that it has.

Seth Godin:        Well, it means a lot to me. Thank you for making a ruckus and showing up the way you do it matters. 

David Reynolds:One more thing I believe I know correctly is that you like to be asked questions you've not been asked before. I figured a real sneaky way of making sure that happens at least once. Although I hope I have a few of those today. , is to ask you, is there a question that you've often wished people would ask or that you really would like to answer that you've not been asked before? 

Seth Godin:       Well, it's an interesting place to start. The difference between now and before is everyone owns their own channel. I own many channels. I have a blog, I have a podcast, et cetera. So if there's something I wanna talk about, I can talk about it. That's new. So my answer to your question is not really, because if there was something I had in mind, I would've already said it. The magic of this is again, undermining the indoctrination of you have to wait for permission. You have to wait for Johnny Carson or the New York Times to ask you something before you get to talk about it. And I think we now live in a world where if it's important you get to talk about it. 

David Reynolds:Let's talk about that introduction I mentioned a minute ago where you have said first and foremost you're a teacher. People might look at a bio or something online and say, I don't see public school educator on here or university professor, this person's not a teacher. And of course teachers come in in many forms, but I just like that first and foremost a teacher phrase I've heard you use. Talk about that a bit. 

Seth Godin:       Well, I have taught at NYU at Pace, at Mercy, I ran a regular series of science talks at the local elementary school. So I have those credentials if you want them. But sure, I think that there's a really big difference between learning and education and learning is auto didactic. We teach ourselves, but it's often easier to teach yourself something if you're in the, in the presence of somebody who's trying to create the conditions for you to learn. And so I'm not a lecturer and I don't have a curriculum, but when you ask me what a good day looks like, to me a good day is not a day where I won something. It's a day when the people around me learned something. And by that measure I call myself a teacher. 

David Reynolds:You talked about Mr. Gim, when you interviewed with Maria Xenidou and you recalled something very interestingly phrased, you said he decided he was going to change my life. Lots of times people say, oh this person changed my life. But to hear you say he decided he was going to change my life is really, really interesting. Can you say why you mentioned it that way? 

Seth Godin:       So I went to his 80th birthday virtually last year, year before. What a treat to be able to connect with somebody all those years later. All of us have had dozens if not more teachers coming up. And I really don't believe it's an accident when a teacher shows up in such a way that somebody redefines who they are or the arc of their work. And I know that enough people in John's class were transformed by his work that it wasn't an accident. And when we connected six years ago or so, five years ago in person, we talked about this and why would someone with that much skill and that much energy stick it out as an elementary school teacher in a public school in Buffalo, New York for all those years? There are so many things he could have done and he did it for a reason, right? He did it because to have the arc of someone's life change and then 40, 50, 70 years of benefit come out of that for the whole world. What a treat. And that's the reason I go up to Canada every year. It's 43rd summer coming up because if I can help an 11 year old become somebody else who they want to be, that's a calling. 

David Reynolds:The follow up to your comment about him deciding to change your life included the statement that teachers can still do that. It was just an observation that this is not something that's been restricted because of current hot topic issues in society or how things have shifted in a school or in a system. So what encouragement would you offer to dedicated educators operating inside some parameters that might stifle their one-on-one opportunities with learners that they really do want to impact? 

Seth Godin:       Well, they are designed to stifle them. The name of the first teacher's college in the United States was the Normal School. And it's not cuz it was in Normal Illinois, it was in Massachusetts. It was called the Normal School cuz it taught you how to teach kids to be normal. And if we're going to teach to the test and build regimented curriculum based institutions, there's gonna be restrictions at every turn. But the teachers should take some solace in knowing that they've got everyone else outnumbered, that 30 kids, one teacher, then all those teachers leveling up to one principal. You have plenty of edges. No, you're not treated with enough respect or dignity or paid enough. But there are plenty of moments when you get to decide to respond or to react, to get to decide who gets to sit in the front of the room and who gets to become a hero and who gets that moment of support or just a, a hand on their back when they're having a hard day and little things repeated consistently with a goal add up to big things. 

David Reynolds:That's a great segue to ask if there is another educator that you would like to mention and maybe it's somebody who helped instill that notion of persistence. Those little things over time that you just mentioned, like writing in your blog every day that really end up turning into a giant volume of impactful work. 

Seth Godin:       Well first I, I wanna highlight persistence is always generous. The hustle of bothering people, of spamming them, of showing up cuz it's good for you. That is not persistence, that is annoying. And you know, you could just look at my inbox and realize how many people have misunderstood the difference between those two. I guess on the spot I would mention Beth Rudd, who lives down the street, I recorded a record album with her when I had my record label. Beth was an English teacher in a local school for years and she didn't teach the way she was supposed to and she probably didn't make the principal the happiest person in the world. But I could line up a hundred kids who would say that Beth's relentless pursuit of insight of like Beth wouldn't be afraid of Chat GPT. She wasn't trying to get kids to write essays cuz we have an essay shortage. She was creating the conditions for them to understand and learn to love language. It's possible wherever you went to the Normal School, it's possible whatever school district you're in, it's just really hard work and it's not given nearly enough recognition. 

David Reynolds:You just mentioned Chat GPT, of course that was the subject of today's blog post. This is recorded on April 24th. You wanna look up that post. I thought it was really interesting that this is a summary. If that's not ironic of what you wrote , that really Chat GPT  is just a really sophisticated summarizing tool. You didn't say it that way, but that's what I took away from it. It was insightful to say that just because you had a lot more access to more information doesn't necessarily equate to increased understanding. I've heard you say more than once, that you don't decide over and over again, I'm going to write a blog today, should I write my blog today? It's like you decided once and you might choose what you're going to write, but the decisions have been made. What would that look like for teachers in the classroom that make a decision to impact lives? And then they have choices they make throughout the day.

Seth Godin:       Right? So if it hasn't already come through, I have so much respect for somebody who shows up in a public school setting. Both my kids went, I went, my wife went, you're asked to do an enormous amount of stuff with a very small amount of resources. With that said, I think we understand some things about learning. Learning creates tension because there's a moment whenever we learn anything where we feel incompetent. Incompetence is a critical part of learning cuz we didn't know something and then we did. So sounding out a word, when you're in second grade, you didn't know what that word was and now you know what it is. That engagement with positive tension is something that we can learn as a habit that we can embrace. And the problem with teaching to the test is it gets right to, here's the summary, just memorize these six things and then you can forget them. Whereas actual learning says here's how you embrace the feeling of useful incompetence on your way to getting better. And that is what John did for me, is he helped me turn sort of a native curiosity into a useful tool. And I believe that every single person is born with some level of curiosity, but most people get it drummed out of them as opposed to treasured. 

David Reynolds:I was gonna ask you for a definition of learning at some point and I think the useful incompetence piece is a huge part of that. So I'm glad you anticipated that in that response. And one of the things that I enjoy about your work is that you often redefine terms, maybe they've lost their meaning because of overuse or misuse. So maybe instead of redefine it's reset mm-hmm or remind people about what something really means. You explain creativity as figuring out what to do next, which I think is just a great definition. And another is success. And my wife and I discussed this just last week. You described it as a measure of how well you keep your promises, which is really a nice way to think about am I being successful or not? Since you've really answered the useful incompetence piece of learning already, can you touch on curiosity then as an engine for learning? 

Seth Godin:       Well David, these are great and I truly appreciate them. The reason for the word choice and definition thing is not that semantics are fun. They are, it's that they're a symptom of how our brain works. And talking about what words really mean is a way to get into the assumptions and wiring we've put in place. That could be in the way, right? Get to versus have to, when we start using one phrase instead of the other, it's gonna change a whole bunch of things about our affect. You were just asking me about, I'm sorry, creativity. I just my, my curiosity 

David Reynolds:As an engine for learning. 

Seth Godin:       Curiosity. Thank you. Yeah, I knew it started with a C. So what we teach indoctrinate, brainwash kids into doing is asking will this be on the test? And the follow up question of will this be on the test is what, what is the right answer? What curiosity is, is why? And we can repeat the question why all the way back, you can't repeat the question. What more than a couple times get it right. Your test is over The why, the why, the why, the why. The why all the way back, and this is one of the frustrating things about the politics of the last hundred years, particularly the last 20, is that the talking heads have no ability to answer why. They have their sentence. It's very fragile, they have their brittle point of view, but if you say why and then why three more times they're stuck. And the same thing happened to industrialists, right? That Western Union said we're not interested in the telephone. Why is that? Because the telegraph makes us a lot of money and we don't want to threaten it. Why is that? Because we like having a boring safe job. Why is that? And pretty soon you can realize the Western Union's gonna go out of business because they have already decided they don't want to grow. And we can decode lots of situations simply by doing four why's in a row. 

David Reynolds:That's really interesting. I just wrote a very short post for an online community we're trying to start and it was a five why's you said four. So somewhere right in that range it really gets at root Cause that's really what I was driving at was if you ask why about the fifth time, the why is that sometimes you get it root cause. And it's interesting that you said a moment ago after about three whys people stop bureaucrats or policy makers or whatever, which means they never get it root cause because it's gonna require a lot of effort when they see what's going on. Yeah. In addition to the words that you've helped redefine and reset, is there anything you're noodling with right now that we could expect to see in an upcoming book or a song of significance teaser that hey I'm, I'm actually gonna start talking about X you know, soon because I think people need to think about this differently. 

Seth Godin:       Well the Song of Significance is my most personal book by a lot. Significance is something that every person I've ever met dreams of cherishes wants, feels they don't have enough of significance, earns us respect it awards us the dignity that we're all entitled to. Significance is the narration of our days. People who feel like they've lost significance start to get frustrated and fade away. And yet we've built an entire world that tries to rob us of significance by trading convenience for it instead. And I think that in this moment of time we have some really profound choices to make about whether we're gonna be spectators or participants, whether we're gonna be leaders or managers. And I don't want to talk about it. I want the people who hear what I have to say to talk about it. I want us to have conversations at work and with our families to ask the questions. You know, why are we doing this? What's it for? Who's it for? What change are we seeking to make? If we have enough of those conversations, things will get better. 

David Reynolds:Those three questions that you wrap that response up with are always useful every single time. If you get stuck, toggle back to creativity for a minute, especially in the current reality of AI, CHAT GPT, those sorts of things. It's everywhere. And of course, I don't know if what I'm reading about it is written by a person or not. , although the tool that was trained on your blog was great fun posting a couple of questions there and to see what kind of responses I got. What would you say about creativity? 

Seth Godin:       We keep redefining what creative work looks like. So if you had shown up in 1949 with a drum machine and a synth and a loop, you would've been seen as the most creative musician of all time. And now, eh, like a teenager can do that. There's no creativity involved. If you played the cello the way Yo-Yo Ma does in 1700, you'd be a legend if you play it that way. Now you sound like Yu Ma, no prizes. So we're gonna see that you don't win a prize for having a blog post every day anymore cuz Chat GPT can write a thousand blog posts a day and they're all gonna be pretty good. So whatever the standard is, the normal, convenient, easy solution can't be the creative one. What are you gonna do after that? Right? That the first person who sold raw herring on a roll in Amsterdam did something creative. The third person was just a street vendor. 

David Reynolds:There's another person, you saw him recently, it was Ben Zander from the Boston Phil Harmonic, one of your blog posts you mentioned you were excited about going to see him in a concert in New York. I went to his Ted Talk. One of the things he said was that as the conductor, his role was to awaken possibility in other people. That's what you've been talking about with teachers, the entire conversation thus far. Isn't that what great teachers do? And did you pick up any new insights or learning during that concert because he gives those pre-concert speeches? 

Seth Godin:       He does. Ben is a dear friend, Ben's former wife, Roz wrote a book that Ben helped with called The Art of Possibility that I can't recommend strongly enough. I personally sold 10,000 copies. Ben has said that he's the only person in the orchestra that doesn't make a sound. So when you watch Ben Zander do his work, you don't get to hear Ben Zander, you get to hear everybody else who are doing something extraordinary because he created the conditions for it to happen. And watching him on his 84th birthday, I would say the biggest thing I learned is that there is a tiny chance, but a hope that I could be one 10th of what he is when I turn 84 into Fatigable for sure. But the thing about the community orchestra that he runs is that almost everyone in it is a volunteer. And even though there are people who get paid to play the flute or the oboe, the people in this orchestra would pay to be in it, not the other way around. 

Seth Godin:       And we need to think really hard about where is the community orchestra in our life? What are you doing that lights you up, that connects you, that challenges you, that intrigues you, that pushes you on curiosity because you can't get that feeling from scrolling TikTok and you can't get that feeling from phoning in your job as a bank teller. We need things in our life that we can point to, to say I achieved more than I thought I could. So when I think about Ben's work, it's all about significance. It's about how do I surround myself with people? We're going to do more than they thought they could 

David Reynolds:Switch in format. You've been asked about this concept and you write about it, talk about it frequently. And that's generosity. one word, prompt, riff on it, however you wish. Generosity. 

Seth Godin:       You know, when we first started talking about this in, I think it was in the marketing seminar, there was a lot of confusion because people thought, oh you mean free, you giving away everything I own. And no, I don't mean that. I think commerce has an important place in our culture. I don't think it costs you anything to hold a door open when there's someone coming in right behind you. I don't think it costs you anything to see other people as a human to offer them the generosity of dignity, of treating them with respect. These things are different than saying $5 off, that when freelancers lower their price, they think they're being generous or desperate. But it's neither of those things. They're just lowering their price. That's not part of the story they set out to build. What's generous is to raise your quality. What's generous is to speak a different truth, to find fresh powder and make a difference there. Those are the things that drive us all forward. And we've been pushed to think, Nope, it just has to be like Amazon, cheaper, easier delivered tomorrow. 

David Reynolds:Do you think about what you want to learn next? And if so, what do you want to learn next? Or do these things just roll and connect and emerge serendipitously all the time? 

Seth Godin:       Well there's lots of kinds of learning I have wanted to learn next the four ball juggle and I've been working on it every day for the last two months. The guy do four before you get to five is know four and five are totally different. But mostly the kinds of things that people think of me around are the result of me being confused when I see something in the world that's working. Like why is it working? How did it happen? Or that isn't working well, if it isn't working, why is it still there? And I can't predict in advance when I'm going to bump into one of those things. It is why everything I do all day is work because I love it. But if I'm noticing something, someone might wanna hear my explanation for it. 

David Reynolds:What's in front of mind? Does that often end up in the day's blog? If I'm working, someone might want to hear what I'm learning or noticing. 

Seth Godin:       Well I know there's gonna be a blog post tomorrow. I'll usually write four before one goes into the world. And I intentionally work to make them about my reader, not about me. And to make them something worth sharing. So I write for my readers, but mostly I write for my readers to share it with other people because it makes them feel better, helps them achieve their goals, makes them feel smart. And my first hundred blog posts weren't written by me. They looked like they were, but they were just me figuring out what a blog was. But once I figured out what Seth Godin sounded like, I try not to publish a blog that doesn't sound like Seth wrote it and I write every single word, but I know how to write in a way that doesn't sound like me. 

David Reynolds:That's real interesting. I think a lot of people don't learn how to write in a way that sounds like them. Mm-hmm . So maybe we've been taught through formulaic writing to some extent and superficial alleged comprehension questions to parrot certain things or certain messages. Correct. So inside this attitude of generosity, you say that attitude is a skill, correct? 

Seth Godin:       No question. 

David Reynolds:Is the basis for that statement that developing skill is a choice so that we can choose to get better at demonstrating a helpful attitude or generosity? Is is that why attitude is a skill? 

Seth Godin:       Yeah. I mean I, I learned it from my friend Zig. I was at dinner last night with someone who had a wristband on his left wrist and I said, what's that? And he said, well every time I complain about something I have to take it off my wrist and put it on the other wrist. And he said, no, I don't complain about things anymore. It's just too much of a hassle. He learned the skill of finding something useful to talk about that wasn't involving a complaint. And why is that more of a, less of a skill than juggling? It's not, right? That the things that we call important soft skills, the real skills of honesty, integrity, enthusiasm, generosity, loyalty. I can go down a long list. These are all skills. You can learn 'em if you want at the first time you try, you probably won't be that good at it, but if you persist you can learn them much faster than you can learn how to juggle four balls 

David Reynolds:That the person that I heard you either talk with or write about perhaps both was Michelle Poro from the Netherlands. Mm-hmm . And you and I have talked today about words a lot and about music a little. We haven't touched on chocolate yet, or food or bagels or avocados. And we could spend a whole podcast episode there.   Michelle Poro talked with you on LinkedIn live about the power of images. What does that look like? The power of images in teaching and learning? 

Seth Godin:       So the Carbon almanac, which I volunteered and organized, took a year and I would've gladly taken 10 wouldn't be what it was if it weren't for Michelle. We have never met in person. But his passion and energy and commitment, this is somebody who basically put his day job on hold for six months to get this thing over the hump. And he's a professional photographer. He has taken pictures of someone's famous sites and people in the world and he understands that even though every single one of us now owns a camera, most of us don't know how to take a picture. And when we do take a picture, we don't use it properly. And it's not just that a picture's worth a thousand words, it's that a picture has a point of view. So it's interesting if you think about alt text, which is really important for people who have various disabilities, but it also reveals something about how we editorialize alt text is when you post a picture on the internet, you're supposed to put in some words to describe what the picture is. 

Seth Godin:       So the people who can't see the picture can read the words. It also, before AI made it easier for search engines, newspapers hate alt text cuz they don't want to admit why they picked the picture. Right? They picked the picture for visceral, emotional, cultural, racial class-based decisions cuz it tells a thousand words but they don't wanna give away why they picked it. And doing these things with intent is important and some newspapers are, and video editors are better at it than others, but we should do it on purpose. Not to say I had a hunch. 

David Reynolds:Those are definitely conscious decisions for sure. Another conscious decision is when you're grappling with something you've written and you've written multiple books. So you've grappled with this more than anybody I know and maybe it's not a grapple for you. To whom is this book dedicated? 

Seth Godin:      

David Reynolds:One of your books was dedicated to your mother, she was really great at initiating things. Can you share something else with us about that? The importance of initiating things and instilling that desire in the people that you, we live with and that you work with that you love? 

Seth Godin:       Uh, I won the parent lottery. I miss both of my parents every single day. My mom was a fixture in our town. She helped run a major cultural institution. We would regularly have 35 people over for dinner and she would start cooking an hour and a half before people came. Cause it's like, yeah, that's what we do. And the initiation part is what you do with your fear that most of us have been taught that the thing to do with your fear is to get smaller. If you have social anxiety or are worried about what people will say, don't invite them over, don't cook for them, order in, right? Because you might get in trouble cuz you might end up failing. And one of the many, many things my mom taught me is that's not generous. Generous is when you make dinner and when you call a meeting and when you launch an initiative because that's where possibility comes from. 

Seth Godin:       So you may have heard of the Antique Road show, which became a huge TV show. Well my mom figured that it would be a really useful benefit for the art museum if she could get Sotheby's to come to town. This is long before the antique road show. Get Sotheby's to come to town and just appraise whatever people brought in to the museum that day. Cuz what a great gimmick to get people to come into the door. And plenty of her peers said, just cool it, the museum's a hundred years old, we're doing fine. Just stop. But in fact, in Buffalo, lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people had never set foot inside the building for a whole bunch of reasons around class and other things. And they announced it. And I will never forget, I must have been 11 walking to the museum an hour before they opened. 

Seth Godin:       There had to be 700 people waiting in line to get in, holding their candlelabras, holding their wine goblets, holding their silverware. It was enough to keep Sotheby's busy for weeks. They had to like make instant decisions about, and they broke so many people's hearts cuz here's a tip, heavy candlelabras are not worth much light. Candle lovers are the valuable ones. But that's a whole other story. But the magic of it was the event wasn't perfect, but the event was amazing and it wasn't that difficult to do, but it took initiative, someone deciding to create possibility and you can choose to live your life that way. Start right now. I mean, no one called you up on the phone, David, and said you have to have a podcast. You decided to do this generous act. What episode are we up to now? 

 

 

David Reynolds:You will be 50. So it's plotting along if 

Seth Godin:       Over and over. 

David Reynolds:Fourth anniversary of episode one is when yours, yours drops. And that's on purpose. 

Seth Godin:       Exactly. 

David Reynolds:You're talking as the adult child about your parent and you're also a parent. And I read somewhere that you had built a canoe with one of your children, I think it was your son. What did you learn from that experience? Building a canoe with your child or maybe from him specifically. And what do you think all of us could take away from that? To learn from those people that we work with that we typically see as our students, that we're imparting our wisdom or our tutelage to them because of age differences or role or position. But it, it's often flipped. 

Seth Godin:       Yeah, I have two sons, they both helped. The younger one did most of the contributing. And I learned from Moe every day. In this case, I learned a lot about fit and finish care structure not settling. For me, sometimes the liminal state between begun and done is awkward. I'd rather get the done so I could begin something else. And he understands that living inside that space for a few extra beats actually creates a lot of value.

David Reynolds:Any closing thoughts? 

Seth Godin:       Well, I'm not sure there's such a thing as closing thoughts. . I, I think that if you have thoughts, you're opening things up. And what I would say to the people who have been sticking with your podcast for four years is the way to pay it forward. It's fine, you know, send David $10, but the real way to pay it forward is to teach somebody something else that you're showing up episode after episode to teach people things. That creates connection. We don't need more trolls, we don't need more divisiveness, we don't need more billionaires, brutalizing people and firing them in public. What we need is possibility and connection cuz that makes things better. So thank you for modeling that. 

David Reynolds:Fewer than 10 episodes had been released when you agreed to be the guest for the 50th episode. So I know why you did that. . So it, it certainly helped, but the support mattered and the encouragement mattered and the work that grew out of the connected ensuing efforts, I believe has mattered. And you know, our sphere of influence is sometimes not even a circle, it's just a line segment. Two points. That's good enough. I just wanna say thanks again for what I've learned and for that nod of encouragement three and a half or four years ago, it's really appreciated. Thank you sir. Have a great day, Seth. Thank 

Seth Godin:       You for doing this. Keep making a ruckus. Bye-bye. 

David Reynolds:Thanks for listening today. Find the Lead Learn Change podcast on your search engine, iTunes or other listening app. Leave a rating, write a review, subscribe and share with others. In the meantime, go lead. Go learn. Go make a change. Go.