So I did an unthinkable.

I put my shy, paranoid Self on a (cushy wi-fi enabled) bus to New York City and stayed in a (oddly wee) hotel room. I walked among strangers with a near-stranger and rarely knew where I was. I put trust in a new friend. I rode in elevators.

All way outside my comfort zone.

Which was suitable because I went to NYC to listen to Seth Godin, and that’s what I count on Seth Godin for. With him around, accepting things as they are can get really really uncomfortable. After listening to him, change is inevitable—desirable, even—because it’s easier and less painful to change than to invent new excuses. So things get done and things get better and things get done better.

Like the time I listened to The Dip on a dark, wet, winter drive and ended up pulling into a parking lot to cry my eyes out. The root of all my fuck-ups was in those 93 minutes…everything I had done and, most importantly, not done. After that, I had to rewrite the story I tell myself about myself. The new story is kinder than the old one, and my plans and my outlook are much improved.

So I didn’t hesitate to spend a nut and hit the road to spend a day in his space. I didn’t come with questions and I didn’t want to network. I just wanted to watch and listen and learn. Which I did.

It was a long day, so it’s a long read—

If you’re out, you’re on

The first thing I did when I walked into the room was blow off Seth Godin. Who I treasure and adore.

Yeah, I know, right?

It wasn’t intentional, which makes it worse. I walked in, gave him my usual “Hey, Howyoudoin’ ” nod-and-flyby, and it didn’t hit me until way later that I didn’t stop moving long enough to give him a chance to respond. Gah.

I was so preoccupied with the sights and sounds of my hike from the hotel, being (almost) late, and finding a decent seat that I’d done what I typically do when I’m surrounded by people, out-of-sorts and overwhelmed: I turned myself off.

But I was in an atypical place with atypical people, so really? It called for an atypical response. From now on, when I go out of the house, I’ll be ready to smile, stop, and chat.

Are you asking the right question?

The seminar was more of a Q & A session than a lecture, so there were lots of questions flying around. Some folks prefaced them to death, some were concise and precise, but either way, the question they asked wasn’t often the question that needed answering and Seth was quick to turn it around. Like this:

• Someone with an educational website asked something like: How do I get enough people into my sales funnel via Google?
  BUT
  Their budget and efforts would be better served by asking: How do I get my alumni so jazzed they tell everyone they know?

• A high-end vendor of an off-the-beaten-path product wants to educate new customers before their first purchase, so first-timers have to call an 1-800 number first. Their question was kin to: How do we get people to call us?
  BUT
  The question they needed to ask before that question was: Why doesn’t our website look as high-end and off-the-beaten-path as our products are?
  

• A sales manager for a new drink concept asked a version of: How do I get people to appreciate the impact of what they drink on their bodies?
  BUT
  A far, far easier question for him to answer is: How and where do I find people who appreciate the impact of what they drink on their bodies?

So when you’re stuck for an answer, try asking a different a question. Ask the question that comes before your question (and maybe the one that comes after). Ask the easier question. Ask the opposite question and see if the answer is truly 180° away.

Can you solve the problem you want to solve?

Sticky question, yes? But hugely important.

Someone offered up a question about their service that amounted to: How do I solve everyone’s music problem? A good question, but Seth pointed out that he, himself, didn’t have a music problem anymore, and neither did a lot of people. A host of MP3 players have solved most everyone’s music problem and it would take a lot to get them to revisit the assessment-selection process and change their minds.

So, actually, really? The company and its service doesn’t have the capacity or ability to solve everyone’s music problem.

BUT

Seth pointed out that the remarkable part about the service isn’t the service itself, but the charitable donations that come from it. He suggested it may be more effective to find people who are driven by a social change problem and not a music or music technology problem.

In the end, the social change/charitable bit is the secondary part of their service offering, but may be the primary selector for their audience. Something to watch out for in your own life and work, yeh?

What do “expansion” and “growth” mean?

A wholesaler shared a beautiful new online retail store and a super question that was like: Now that I’ve become a successful wholesaler with stuff on the shelves of 800 boutiques worldwide, how do I become a successful retailer?

Seth’s answer was pretty much: Don’t.

My guess is the wholesaler saw the wholesale aspect of their business as a milestone or a bullet point. But Seth saw it a different way, where each billing relationship was an asset worth cultivating. So rather than expand their business by branching into the new-to-them world of online retail, he invited them to thrive in their familiar space and strive for more of what they already have: more shelf space at each boutique.

Imagine that: The next big step for your business, relationships, worklife, etc, may not be to do something completely different…it may be to do, even better, what you already do quite well. Deeper instead of wider. Imagine.

What your most valuable asset?

That wholesaler had 800 assets they were maybe, kinda taking for granted. And maybe you already saw a B2B billing relationship as an asset, but it was new to me.

Remembering that an asset is a thing with exchange value that’s convertible to cash, here’s how assets popped up throughout the day:

Got a product? Got a list of vendors? Got a list of customers?
Your products are an asset, but each vendor is too. And so is each customer.

Got blog content? Got readers?
Your content can be an asset, but so can your readership. Actually, your content is nothing without the readers. Each reader is an asset. Actually, each attentive reader is.  A notable difference.

Got fan mail?
Each piece of mail is connected to a person who gave enough of a damn about you to write something on paper, put it in an envelope, lick a stamp, and take it to a mailbox. In a word: asset.

Thinking back on it, I don’t recall objects ever being assets. People and relationships to people were the only assets. Huh.

Sell to the dreamers, not those that live the dream

You probably already know this story, but I’m gonna tell it anyway, just in case. And I’m gonna tell it my way instead of Seth’s way:

Far far FAR more people want to be organized than are organized. And more people want to be fit than are fit, want to be productive than are productive, want to be healthy than are healthy, want to be spiritually balanced than are spiritually balanced, and on and on. And on.

Which is why there are no shortage of television shows, products, services, e-courses, blogs, ebooks, and whatnot about putting stuff away, exercising, eating right, meditation, and generally getting our shit together. And no shortage of people standing in line to watch and buy them (me included!).

But there are people who’ve succeeded with all of those. They’ve got all their poo-poo together. They don’t have any problems left to solve.

All 6 of those people are living the dream that all the rest of us are dreaming. What could you possibly sell them and why would you bother when the rest of us are lined up around the block?

Jus’ sayin’.

Boil it down or build it up (as needed)

Funny thing. There was a blogger with a large, loving readership and a mix of content that makes it hard to know what to offer them. And there was a trade show host who thrived on being the middleman until Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter began connecting his two audiences without her.

They had questions about their disparate problems, and Seth had two different ideas that, in the end, came out the same:

• For the blogger: Rather than go crazy trying to segment her readership along her many topics, she could obsess over the relative handful of people who are into the whole kit-and kaboodle and build an annual premiere event around them. And charge accordingly for it, of course.
  If the blogger had as few (or as many, depending on your point of view) attendees as Seth had for this seminar: around 80, at the same price: $880, she’d gross $70,400. Seth said 750 readers can make you a million if you work it right, and we proved that in the Alexandria Brown-1000 True Fans series. It just gets truer.
• For the trade show host: Rather than only summon attendees to a three-day event, how much better to cultivate a year-round relationship through a community website, mailing list, mini-events, etc as a by-product of attending the event.
  After a whole year of hanging out, few would miss the opportunity to connect offline at the annual event OR miss the event and thereby be left out of the online community. We brainstormed a similar thing for that art show guy in 7 Off-Season Income Ideas for an Event Website.

So the year-round blogger can distill her community to suit an offline event, while the offline event facilitator can preserve and expand her role as Connector by hosting an online venue throughout year.

Two different problems, two different directions, same result. Funny thing.

But wait, there’s more…

Seth also talked about:

• Art (as in: execution of a rare skill, not as in: paintings sculpture) and Purple Cow for People
• The industrial age, the information age, and the music industry
• Curators, talismans, and artifacts
• Coke Japan, Rita’s Candy Store, and pickles in a bag
• Obsessing over your right people
• Being overt and consistent
• How “really good” is no longer good enough
• The most important members of an invite-only club (The first ones)
• How to compete on price (You can’t)
• Where value comes from (Difficulty and scarcity)
• Which ideas won’t spread (What we can’t see, don’t notice, or won’t want to talk about)
• Josiah Wedgwood as the first marketer
• Marketing on a curve
• The cream of the crop
• Adding a zero, and
• Worldview, Squidoo, Yahoo, and “Ooooo!”

He was brilliant. But this is plenty enough for now, eh?

.

Blessings on your holiday (and every day),