Q & A: Maverick Messenger

Marketing expert. Entrepreneur. Best-selling author. Blogger. Self-described "agent of change." Creator of an alternative MBA program. Seth Godin is one of those smart people whose job is...well, it's not quite clear. He writes about how ideas spread. About how to think now. He is engaging. He shines with passion and confidence but is remarkably modest. He loves taking conventional wisdom and turning it inside out. "Believe it or not," he has written, "quitting is often a smart way to manage your life and career." The only way to survive now, Godin argues, is to be an artist, investing emotionally in what you do. Godin is avatar of the new way, which is...well, don't expect a summary from me because, as Godin would be the first to tell you, there are no rules anymore.

What do you consider your job?

My job is to point out things people already realize but help them understand them in a different way that gets them to take action.

Like what?

Telling people that the economy has changed and doing just the job you're told to do isn't going to get you what you want. Ideas that spread win. That's pretty self-evident—yet the record companies are busy suing their fans. If they understood that they're getting from their fans a chance to spread their ideas, they would have to reinvent a way to make money. Instead of selling CDs, they'd be promoting concerts. But they don't want to change.

Does anybody ever want to change?

People who really want to succeed discover that the best way is to change faster than the competition. If the marketplace is waiting to hear something new and you get there first, then you win. Apple keeps getting to the marketplace first with a device people want instead of insisting that people stick with what they have.

How do you know when the marketplace is waiting?

This is where the art comes in. There is no manual. People can't tell you how they know. But being able to see where the market is going before it gets there is the only skill being well-rewarded now.

How do you develop those antennae?

For me, the secret is that the cost of failure has gone down dramatically. So I fail more often than almost everyone I know. I'm constantly creating ideas, and every day I put a new one out there. Sometimes I do a good blog post, and sometimes I don't.

Kids growing up in the middle and upper-middle classes today are being trained for success by avoiding all failure.

The school system was invented by industrialists, and its only function was to train people to work in factories. When you slap on top of it standardized testing and No Child Left Behind, what you are left with is a system optimized for compliance—the opposite of what we need. What we need to teach is how to solve interesting problems.

How do you teach people how to solve problems?

Our lizard brain, the prehistoric brain, deals with anger and fear. We get kids to behave in school by reinforcing the lizard brain. We say, "If you don't behave, we'll send you to the principal's office." Every successful person I know—and I've studied a lot—has come up with a way to quiet the lizard brain, to soothe it or steer it or ignore it.

What damage does the lizard brain do?

It's the voice that says, "Maybe I should run this by Legal one more time." The alternative MBA program I ran last year—I had six strangers virtually move in with me and spend every day for six months learning everything I do, it's nuts—if I had run it by anybody I never would have done it. Forty-nine thousand people looked at the application, 450 applied, 27 became finalists, and I picked nine. It was more exclusive than the Harvard Business School. And I'm so glad I did it.

Why?

Because it changed me and it changed them. It was generous. The original art that each of us does—without a map the only thing that matters is art—is generous acts that change people for the better. When you get in the habit of doing that, without asking for a raise every day, you become a better artist. And then you discover that people will line up to give you money, because everyone wants someone who changes organizations for the better. Those people get recruited; they don't need resumes.

How do you get people to commit generous acts when everyone is so worried about the bottom line?

There is a temporary recession going on, and there is a permanent dismantling of the industrial era. There's more opportunity than ever for a small company to have an impact. The decision you have to make is simple: Fit in or stand out. Most people who work in businesses are trying to be invisible. There are now some companies that want people who are going to stand out and make a difference. But they have to mean it. Usually they don't; they hire people based on a resume, which is a sheet of paper saying how compliant you are.

So how to hire? Instead of people presenting a resume should they claim, "I'm a troublemaker?"

Base it on a reputation for making a difference. If you want to be an indispensable artist, act like an indispensable artist.

With the entire industrial system, including schools, dedicated to compliance and medicating kids to comply in classrooms, I'm hoping that the "losers" are going to change the world.

They always do.

So what is the alternative to the industrial system?

I call it the art system. People doing work that matters, feeling human about it, feeling connected, and making an impact. Companies now want their employees to step up and do something interesting. But the employees don't believe it. Maybe they'll believe me.

How do you make that happen?

The only way people learn is from stories. So I tell stories. And I use words like purple cow, linchpin, and idea virus.

Purple cow?

That's the title of my book, the best-selling marketing book of the past 10 years. What it says is that people don't talk about boring stuff. Which is pretty obvious. And people don't watch the ads anymore. The only way to get talked about is to make interesting products—purple cows. I haven't worn matching socks in five years. There's a company that mismatches socks based on ideas in the book; they decided to make socks for 12-year-old girls. If you're a 12-year-old girl, you say four magic words: Wanna see my socks? You get a lot of joy from your $10. That's what the future is—socks that don't match.