Seth Godin's Blog, page 28

Podcasting is the new blogging

Not as a way to make big dollars (blogging didn’t do that either). But as a way to share your ideas, to lead your community, to earn trust.

Podcasting is a proven technology that is still in its infancy. It’s an open mic, a chance for people with something to say to find a few people (or perhaps more than a few people) who’d like to hear them say it.

And podcasting is the generous act of showing up, earning trust and authority because you care enough to raise your hand and speak up.

Over the summer, Alex DiPalma ran the Podcasting Fellowship, and I was lucky enough to be invited along to help out.

I was thrilled at the results.

https://seths.blog/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/TPF-Testimonial-compressed.mp3

More than 300 people signed up to be part of it, and the creativity was electric. People from all over the world, from 18 years old to 60, learned how to create a podcast they could be proud of. They didn’t just learn. They did it.

Learning the technology is the easy part. It’s the peer support, the community and the bias for shipping that really matter.

Because you asked, we’re going to run it one more time. You can read all the details right here.

Signups and engagement begin today, the lessons (delivered, no surprise, in podcast format) begin a few days later and we close signups on October 15th. It costs about $10 a day, and there’s an early bird discount if you hurry. You can do it at your own pace, and an hour a day is probably enough to get you going (though you can put more into it and get more out of it).

I’ve said before that my decision to blog is one of the best I’ve ever made for my career, for the work I do, and most of all, for my continued posture of teaching and leaping. If you’ve considered that this might be your moment to leap, I hope you’ll consider investing in The Podcasting Fellowship and joining Alex, her coaches and me in this 45 day journey together.

PS My Akimbo podcast is now in its third season. You can subscribe or hear it at Akimbo. Here are the most recent show notes.

            

Considering the vacancy tax

Landlords are notorious for having a bias toward raising the rent. They’re in it for the long haul, they’ve seen downturns before, and while they’re quick to raise rents in good times, they are loathe to lower rents, even if it means sitting with an empty storefront for months at a time.

While this math might be compelling for some landlords, it’s terrible for the cities those buildings are located in.

Empty storefronts deny residents accessible services.

They lead to vandalism and other crime.

And they suck the vibrancy from the neighborhood.

They also deprive the municipality from sales tax revenue, cost jobs and take watchful eyes away from the neighborhood as well.

If we view the ability to have a well-cared for, civil neighborhood as a privilege, it’s logical to consider a vacancy tax for landlords as an incentive for them to lower rents when decreased demand happens because retailers can’t afford the old rent.

It could be something like: For any storefront that’s empty, after two months of vacancy, the landlord has to pay a tax of 20% of the average rent they’d be receiving. All the money would go to neighborhood improvements and policing.

Lower rents create new innovations, which leads to more interaction and more vibrant neighborhoods. And in the long run, it gives landlords an incentive to do what actually generates more of what they seek as well.

            

Two money mistakes that founding CEOs make

Raising too little. And raising too much.

The typical go-go small business goes out and raises $200,000 or $400,000 in equity, usually from friends, family and amateur investors. Maybe a bit more or less.

This is a danger zone.

This is funding for your expenses and your salary and it will rarely pay off for you or for your investors. Because, it’s worth remembering, your investors want their money back, somehow, someday soon.

If your goal is to build a significant brand, the sort of consumer products company that so many entrepreneurs dream of, you’re going to need fifty times that much before you cross the chasm.

And if you’re building a direct-marketing company, something you can bootstrap, where you sell high-value products and services to businesses and consumers in a measurable way, then you ought to be making money right from the start. Sure, you might need some equipment, but in today’s Meshed world, that’s easier than ever to outsource.

“And then a miracle occurs,” is something no fundraising entrepreneur ought to ever say.

            

A fist in search of a face

If you want to cherry pick to make an argument, no doubt, you'll be able to find some cherries.

And if you want to pick a fight, no doubt you'll find someone (or something) to have a fight with.

Changing a mind is different than having an argument. Persuasion takes patience, skill and insight, not force.

            

Gloom (and doom)

Doom is inevitable.

Gloom is optional.

Gloom has no positive effects on ameliorating doom.

Doom happens. Gloom is a choice.

            

Four roads we call customer service

Road 1: I can learn from you and make things better

Road 2: You’re an important customer and I can bring empathy and care to this moment to strengthen our relationship

Road 3: I can teach you something and make things better

Road 4: Go away

Now it begins to make sense. For example, if you call Hyatt’s 800 number, they’ll tell you that they’re not actually in contact with management. That all they can do is refer you to the front desk. They’re not there to learn anything from you.

If you call a company that puts you on hold for a long time, you’re on road 4. The organization has decided that you are a cost, not an asset.

Road 1 customer service is pretty rare. It tends to happen with very small organizations, and that’s one reason why companies appear callous and stuck when they get bigger. They don’t want to spend the resources to expose their decision-makers and creators to the people who actually use the product or service, so they build a moat around them. All they seek to learn is, “how cheap can we mollify customers?”

Road 2 and Road 3 can overlap. It’s entirely possible that the customer is upset or confused because they need training or insight or an explanation. By teaching them how to navigate their situation, you can improve satisfaction at the same time you rebuild a relationship.

Road 3 is often best done with the internet, with a manual, with a video. It’s a chance for the customer (who’s enrolled in getting their problem solved) to interact with a well-designed system that can teach them how to solve it. This can fall apart when the customer doesn’t actually want to learn, or worse, when the organization does a mediocre job of education.

Sometimes, though, the flight actually is cancelled, the software has a bug or the weather just isn’t what it needs to be. In that moment, education can help, but what matters more is clarity, respect and care. Most customers don’t actually expect miracles, but they certainly expect more than Road 4.

The harried commodity providers, the pawns in a monopolistic system that have chosen to race to the bottom, the airlines, the cable companies, the underfunded government agencies–all they have to offer is Road 4.

Go away.

If they had guts, they’d just say so.

If they had talent, they’d make you go away without actually being upset.

Instead, the on-hold industrial complex has created an endless maze, designed to sort through the slightly-annoyed and only serve the remaining truly-committed to getting to the bottom of it.

What a waste.

If you engage with customers, as a freelancer or as a public company CEO, pick your road. Be clear about what it’s worth and what it costs. And then do that.

The confusion about what you’re seeking to achieve helps no one.

[More on this in a previous episode of Akimbo.]

            

The red zone is for unloading…

If you want a process to go faster, it's tempting to focus on the straightaways.

Get your delivery drivers to go faster on the highway. Get your development team to take fewer breaks during a sprint. Push for everyone to get out of the way of the moving object. Faster processors!

Actually, you'll get far more productivity if you focus on your loading and unloading instead. How many meetings does it take to get something approved for delivery or development? How many false starts are there? When work is done, does it sit for a long time before it gets used?

You don't win races based on your top speed.

            

The myth of mirror magic

Based on how much time we spend staring at the mirror, grooming our social media, tweaking our book cover… you’d think that there’s a correlation between the last few hours of tweaking and the results that we get.

There must be… after all, we spend more time worrying about the cover than we spend writing the book, more energy answering the trolls than serving our best customers, more money on concealer and blush than on healthy food.

But of course, as you read this, you realize that this isn’t true.

You can’t name someone you befriended because his eyeglass frames were just the right shape, or the last book you loved because the cover was perfectly typeset.

For surface shine, 80% might be more than enough. After that, the tweaking is for us, not those we seek to serve.

            

Buyer beware?

Everyone hated the traveling salesman.

That’s because he came to town, said whatever it took to make the sale, and then left.

In 1900, Sears saw a market opportunity. Their catalog had more variety, sure, but what it really offered was a guarantee. Tens of thousands of people even bought a house from the Sears catalog. They become the twentieth century’s biggest retailer because the company understood the lifetime value of trust—difficult to earn, but worth it.

The internet is going through the same schism right now.

Some folks are happy to sell you something right now, then bye, see ya (or not), because every website is in essence from out of town. With so much pressure on clickthrough rates and yield, it’s not surprising that companies are saying whatever they need to in order to close a sale. Big promises, very little care or support.

At the same time, some successful organizations have taken a completely different path. They’re so focused on maximizing the lifetime value for the customer (and themselves) that they work overtime to tell their customers the truth. It’s not for everyone and it might not be for you. Truth works because it earns trust.

Dropbox, software that I’ve recommended here before, is going through an identity crisis. They’ll need to decide if they want to invest in what it takes to be trusted. I’ve wasted many hours over the last few months trying to work my way through some significant bugs (workflow and data loss) with them, and each of the many customer service people I’ve worked with have pushed me to do more testing, and they’ve clearly stated that my problem is unique. This ‘bluff, stall and get used to it’ strategy is the sort of thing one might expect from a traveling salesman. Yesterday they finally let me know that in fact it’s a known issue, that it affects many people with hardware and software like mine, and I’m stuck with it. I can’t easily rip it out, and I can’t happily work with it either.

If they had told me 4 months ago, they would have had a chance at earning my trust as I built a workaround with them. Instead, they’ve lost a sneezer and a referrer, as well as the benefit of the doubt.

When you tell the buyer to beware, you’ve also told him or her to not bother to trust you.

            

Letters and numbers

If you make serial numbers or passwords, don’t use 0 or o or 1 or l. Simply skip them as options.

If you want people to remember something, don’t mix letters and numbers together.

If you want people to be able to type in a code on a phone, don’t use caps.

The best passwords and serial numbers to share are actually a series of simple words. blueredrobin is way easier to type and remember than b2#3R4, even though they have similar security.

If this is so obvious, why is it rarely done?

Everything is designed, and design is marketing. It shows that you care, it makes the people you seek to serve happier, and it’s easier, too.