Tag / seth godin

by Nathan Coumbe

“People like us do healthy things like this”

According to Seth Godin, the definition of culture is, “People like us do things like this.”

Any sort of “culture” you want to be part of has things people like them do, so all you have to do to join that culture is do those things too.

Want to be a writer? What do writers do regularly that makes them successful? Copy those behaviors, and you’ll be a writer, too.

Have you always wanted to be a politically engaged, active, contributing citizen? What do those sorts of people do daily, and can you build a relationship with them?

I was thinking about this in the context of health this morning, and I thought it could be a really helpful way to develop healthier (and sustainable) practices in your life.

What do the healthy people you know do on a regular basis? Answering that question is a really good way to become people like us in this context (i.e., people who are healthy).

Some of those things are pretty basic:

  • They move often and a lot, in ways they enjoy
  • They eat more whole foods in moderate amounts
  • They sleep well
  • They have ways to manage their stress

The hard part, of course, is actually developing these practices. But one key to becoming a “person like this” is to get involved with those types of people. They will naturally rub off on you.

Culture and community might be a game-changer.

by Nathan Coumbe

Just because you can doesn’t mean you should

It’s one of my favorite lines from Jurassic Park, and it applies in just about every situation imaginable.

via GIPHY

In my case, it’s on my mind daily as I watch the L&D industry, of which I’m a part, rapidly adopt AI for anything and everything that it possibly can.

The biggest victim of this is video creation. There are now approximately 7 trillion companies that all offer some form of talking-head, AI-avatar video-generating software that’s supposed to make video creation fast, simple, and easy for practitioners.

The problem is, most of it is awful. At least, if you care about your craft and the quality of your output.

The videos are generic. They don’t actually “TEACH” you anything. They simply come across as informational videos, which ironically is what people constantly complain about in corporate training. “It’s too boring. Not actionable. Just random information that I don’t know what to do with.”

So it’s great if you want to do more of the same stuff that doesn’t work, but you want to do it quickly, cheaply, and efficiently.

However, if you ACTUALLY want to create learning that matters, you might be better served doing it without AI. Or at least learn best practices for making learning stick or making it applicable, then work that into your AI-generated videos.

As always, it comes down to design thinking: Who’s it for and what’s it for?

If you know the answer to those questions, you can make quality content. Maybe with AI, or maybe not.

Just because you can do it with AI doesn’t mean you should.

by Nathan Coumbe

Excuse me: Is that emergency button made in China?

There’s a blue emergency call tower halfway along a walking trail I frequent each week.

If you’re being attacked or having a heart attack, you smack a button on it, and it immediately calls emergency services and shares your location with them so they can find you—fast.

When I walked by it the other day, I noticed they’d added something new to it. It was a big sign, probably a square foot in size.

And on the sign, printed in big block letters, were the words, “Proudly made in the USA!”

I thought about that sign for the rest of my walk. I just kept thinking, “Who was that for? What was the purpose of that new sign?”

I don’t think it’s for the person in trouble. If you’re being chased by an axe murderer, would you check the tower for a “Made in China” stamp before you pressed the button?

I doubt it.

And if it were manufactured somewhere else, would that really deter you? Oh geez. Made in China?! Gross. I’d rather this guy just kill me than press the button.

It’s not marketing. No one who sees it has any need (or ability) to buy one and stick it in their front yard, so where it’s made doesn’t factor into a buying decision.

Is it supposed to inspire confidence in people like me who walk past it every day? I already know most things aren’t manufactured here, and they typically work just fine.1

The only answer that seems to fit is that it’s for the people who installed it.

It’s a flag. It’s performative patriotism—not for any user of the tower, but for whoever approved the purchase, or whoever installed it. It’s a tribal signal. To paraphrase Seth Godin: “People like us install things like this.”

The sign isn’t communicating with us. It’s communicating about someone else.

  1. In fact, I’ve had such horrible experiences with American-made brands (see: any American car) that it might actually be triggering the opposite effect the sign intended. Now I’m thinking, “Man… Would that thing actually work in an emergency?” ↩︎
by Nathan Coumbe

Courage is a skill

Seth Godin has arguably one of the best ideas for getting a project started that you’ll ever read. It’s called “First, ten.”

The idea is to share what you’ve created—a book, podcast, newsletter, business idea, whatever—with 10 people who already know and trust you. And if it’s good, they’ll share it with three, five, or ten others. Soon, your idea will spread, and you’ll have the opportunity to do it again.

But sometimes, even that is too terrifying to contemplate. So what can you do instead?

Find a single person. Just one person who loves you unconditionally and whom you trust implicitly. Maybe it’s your sister, your mom, or your best friend.

Share it with them. Not because they’ll praise you for it or because they’ll share it widely. Do it simply to show your fear who’s boss.

Stretch that courage muscle by starting as small as possible. Because bravery is a skill. It can be learned through practice and repetition.

by Nathan Coumbe

Why do we diminish our work?

An acquaintance of mine in Seth Godin’s Purple Space Community announced a new project. It was one I never would have thought of, yet still found fascinating and potentially life-changing for some people.

But he ended his announcement by saying, “I know it’s not significant or anything…”

Why do we do that? Why, when we embark on a new journey or start something new, do we diminish it from the outset?

Because we’re afraid it might not work.

Because we don’t want to feel a sense of letdown.

Because we equate “significance” with the size of the impact, not the impact itself.

Significance: the quality of being worthy of attention; importance.

Nowhere in that definition does it say anything about being worthy of attention to a large number of people. It just says “worthy of attention.” And if it’s worthy of attention to a few people, that makes it significant to those people!

I shared with him the Tale of the Starfish:

A young girl was walking along a beach where thousands of starfish had washed up during a storm. When she came to a starfish, she picked it up and threw it back into the ocean.

A man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? You can’t save them all. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl picked up another starfish and hurled it into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “Well, I made a difference for that one!”

by Nathan Coumbe

You can’t lead everyone

Which means one of two things:

1. You must either improve your leadership abilities so that people will follow you where you want to go.

    Or, if you already have the skill…

    2. You must find the right people willing to go on the journey with you. 

    The right skills or the right people—figure out which one is holding you back.

    by Nathan Coumbe

    More bad ideas lead to more creativity

    For most of us, if we want to be more original, to be more successful, to be more “renowned,” the key is to have more ideas. To create more things.

    You need to focus on the quantity of work you create—the output—and less on the quality.

    Why? You need bad ideas to come up with a few good ones. 

    Seth Godin has a great rant about this around writer’s block. People don’t actually get writer’s block. They are afraid of writing down bad ideas and claim they have no good ideas.

    Good ideas often come through sheer volume.

    by Nathan Coumbe

    The secret approach to bootstrapping

    You can be an entrepreneur: someone who builds something big, hires lots of people to do the work, and gets a ton of start-up money from investors.

    Or you can be a freelancer: a skilled craftsperson who does high-quality work directly for clients.

    But there’s a third option: bootstrapping.

    To bootstrap a business is to find a group of customers with a problem who are so willing for you to solve it that they will pay you up front to build the business that will solve it for them.

    And the secret to bootstrapping that many up-and-coming business people don’t know is that you don’t necessarily have to have the solution to the problem.

    You simply have to see the problem, empathize with the people who have it, and trust yourself to know that you can and will figure out a solution that works.1

    Why does this approach matter? Because smart, solution-oriented people often get so bogged down in the details of how to solve a problem that they never do the hard work of finding customers with a problem that needs solving.

    So, find people who need help first, then figure out how to solve the issue.

    (H/t to Seth Godin and the folks over at Purple Space)

    1. Don’t lie to people and tell them you can solve their problem, then take their money and run. That’s not bootstrapping – that’s a con. ↩︎
    by Nathan Coumbe

    Atomic writing

    Atomic Habits by James Clear consistently tops every bestseller list.

    And for good reason: if you follow the ideas, you’ll improve your habits. Improve your habits, and you improve your days. Improve your days, and you improve your life.

    What’s the saying? “Sow a thought and you reap an action; sow an act and you reap a habit; sow a habit and you reap a character; sow a character and you reap a destiny.”

    Emerson definitely said it better than I. But it means the same thing: your daily habits lead to your lasting legacy.

    Which brings me to an idea I presented to someone the other day.

    A friend told me he wanted to write. And he’d considered going the “Stephen King” route, writing 2,000 words a day, but he seemed daunted by that prospect.

    I agreed. That’s a lot to commit to at the beginning. So I suggested he go the Atomic Habits route instead.

    What’s the smallest version of that habit he could reasonably commit to?

    My idea: write one sentence every day. Then don’t break the streak.

    I find it hard to believe that anyone reading this can’t come up with at least one original thought every day.

    It doesn’t have to be brilliant. In fact, I guarantee that 50% of your ideas will be “below average.” But so what? Half my blog posts are below average—that’s the definition!

    It doesn’t have to be brilliant—it just has to exist! Do that for 30 days, and the 31st sentence will be infinitely better than the 1st one.

    A writer writes. So be a writer and start writing!

    by Nathan Coumbe

    Generosity is the antidote to fear

    Instead of focusing on how risky something feels, focus instead on how generous you’re being.

    H/t to Seth Godin

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